Through the Giant Cactus Forest 119 



snake-like forms of vivid green or claret appear, 

 bending down to the ground, to rise again, and 

 over their entire lengths are star-like bunches of 

 spines. Now it is a linked variety, with clusters 

 of yellow flowers, then all seem to melt away 

 as the scene changes in this extravaganza and 

 we are on a llano, and in the distance a mass 

 of vivid yellow stands out against the purple of 

 the distant Sierra. 



You may have thought of such a thing after 

 looking at Japanese colored pictures, yet the 

 reality is so artificial that the palo verde forest 

 which we now enter seems, in reality, of the things 

 dreams are made of. There is a vital change, 

 yet the dominant note, strange, elusive, impos- 

 sible green, is still here, the green of the palo 

 verde, and presently the entire horizon is en- 

 compassed by this wonderful little forest of vivid 

 green, powdered, irised, starred, with yellow 

 flowers. 



The palo verde is rarely over twenty-five feet 

 high, but it is expansive, spreading out in an 

 extraordinary way; so, for a little plant, it fills 

 a large place in the perspective. Palo verde, in 

 the vernacular, means a green tree, and all trees 

 may be said to be green, but this tree and the 

 forest, are peculiar from the fact that the trunk, 

 the limbs, and every twig is a vivid startling 

 green that I do not remember ever having seen, 

 except in French impressionist paintings, un- 



