86 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



preference. I am told that it has been successfully 

 grown in the mountains of North Carolina, and it ought 

 to thrive near timber line on Mount Washington, if 

 some White Mountain enthusiast would take the 

 trouble to try it. I hope some day to experiment with 

 it in the Berkshire Hills. 



Next to the squaw grass, the most conspicuous wild 

 flower in Glacier Park is undoubtedly the dog-tooth 

 violet (Erythronium grandiflorwn) with its smaller 

 variety, the parviflorum. There is nothing unusual 

 about this plant, of course, as it almost exactly resembles 

 the variety Americanum of the East, save that it grows 

 taller; but it is conspicuous in the Rockies for its brave 

 ubiquity. Naturally an early Spring bloomer, it 

 doesn't get its chance in the upland meadows and on the 

 high slopes till the snow melts, so that you may find its 

 golden lily bells nodding as late as August. When 

 a winter snowfield melts, it recedes along the edges, 

 showing bare ground for a day or two. Up through this 

 ground come the lily leaves of the "violets," and with 

 great rapidity, under the hot summer sun, the plants 

 burst into blossom. Sometimes they do not even wait 

 for the melting. I gathered scores of them blooming 

 through an inch or more of snow. Often the edge of a 

 large snowfield for half a mile will be bordered with a 

 solid belt of gold, from six to a hundred feet wide ac- 

 cording to the rapidity with which the melting has 

 taken place. If the snow melts slowly, other flowers 



