Flowers in Colorado. 



sacred joy of life that we decorate, 

 not the sacred sadness of death. Going 

 northwest from the town towards the 

 mesa or table-land which lies in that 

 direction between us and the foot- 

 hills, we find still other blossoms, no 

 less beautiful than those of which I 

 have spoken : the wild morning-glory 

 wreathes the willow bushes along the 

 Fountain Creek which we must cross, 

 and in the sandy spots between the 

 bushes grow the wild heliotrope in 

 masses, and the wild onion, whose 

 delicate clustered umbels, save for their odor, 

 would be priceless in bouquets. Yellow lu- 

 pine, red gilias, wild roses, and white spiraeas 

 are here also ; and waving by the roadsides, careless and 

 common as burdocks in New England, grows the superb 

 mentzelia. This is a regal plant ; the leaves are of a bluish- 

 green, long, jagged, shining, like the leaves of the great 

 thistles which so adorn the Roman Campagna ; the plant 

 grows some two feet or two and a half feet high, and 



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