58 IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 



unshaded from the burning sun, flourish flowers 

 innumerable. Rosebushes, towering far above 

 one 's head, loaded with bloom ; shrubs of sev- 

 eral kinds, equally burdened by delicate white 

 or pink blossoms ; the ground covered with foot- 

 high pentstemons, blue and lavender, in which 

 the buds fairly get in each other's way; and 

 a curious plant primrose, I believe which 

 opens every morning, a few inches from the 

 ground, a large white blossom like the magnolia, 

 turns it deep pink, and closes it before night ; 

 several kinds of yellow flowers ; wild geraniums, 

 with a look of home in their daintily penciled 

 petals ; above all, the wonderful golden colum- 

 bine. I despair of picturing this grand flower 

 to eyes accustomed to the insignificant colum- 

 bine of the East. The blossom is three times 

 the size of its Eastern namesake, growing in 

 clumps sometimes three feet across, with thirty 

 or forty stems of flowers standing two and a 

 half feet high. In hue it is a delicate straw 

 color, sometimes all one tint, sometimes with 

 outside petals of snowy white, and rarely with 

 those outsiders of lavender. It is a red-letter 

 day when the flower-lover comes upon a clump 

 of the lavender-leaved columbine. Far up in 

 the mountains is found still another variety 

 of this beautiful flower, with outside petals of a 

 rich blue. This, I believe, is the State flower 

 of Colorado. 



