SIERRA PRIMROSE (Primula suffrutescens, Gray). Flowers 

 red-purple, ^ inch to an inch across, salver-shaped, the 5 lobes 

 notched, borne in a loose umbel topping a leafless stalk 4 

 inches high or less. Leaves thick, wedge-shaped, several- 

 toothed at the summit and tapering to a margined footstalk; 

 all crowded on woody stems or rootstocks close to the ground. 

 Blooming in summer in the crevices of rocks or on gravelly 

 ridges on the higher peaks of the Sierra Nevada of California. 



Visitors in the Yosemite National Park who essay the ad- 

 venture of the High Sierra in late July or August, are pretty 

 sure to be rewarded by the sight of the brilliant posies of 

 this shrubby Sierra Primrose the only true primrose native to 

 California. It is one of those charming plants, to quote John 

 Muir, "gentle mountaineers, Nature's darlings, which seem 

 always the finer the higher and stormier their homes." Per- 

 haps it is with plants as it is with a fine humanity, the storm 

 and stress of life serves only to bring out the best in them. 



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