PLANT ECCENTRICITIES. 67 



severed from the parent stem, not only weep 

 thick white tears, which stain the hands and the 

 garments, but utterly refuse to subsist on water, 

 and begin at once to droop. Is it the vitality in 

 the air which forces even the plants to eccentri- 

 cities? Or can it be that they have not yet 

 been subdued into uniformity like ours ? Are 

 they unconventional nearer to wild Nature? 

 So queries an unscientific lover of them all. 



This slight sketch of a few flowers gives 

 hardly a hint of the richness of Colorado's flora. 

 No words can paint the profusion and the 

 beauty. I have not here even mentioned some 

 of the most notable : the great golden colum- 

 bine, the State flower, to which our modest blos- 

 som is an insignificant weed ; 



" The fairy lilies, straight and tall, 

 Like torches lit for carnival ; " 



the primrose, opening at evening a disk three 

 or four inches across, loaded with richest per- 

 fume, and changed to odorless pink before 

 morning ; exquisite vetches, with bloom like 

 our sweet pea, and of more than fifty varieties ; 

 harebells in great clumps, and castilleias which 

 dot the State with scarlet ; rosy cyclamens " on 

 long, lithe stems that soar ; " and mertensias, 

 whose delicate bells, blue as a baby's eyes, turn 

 day by day to pink ; the cleome, which covers 

 Denver with a purple veil ; the whole family of 

 pentstemons, and hundreds of others. 



