August 26, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



343 



The Wild Gardens of the Sierra. 



OUR California Sierra is five hundred miles long and 

 seventy miles wide. The elevation is from 6,ooo to 

 nearly 15,000 feet. No great mountain range is more easy 

 of access or better adapted to outdoor life. John Muir 

 calls it not the Snowy Range, but the Range of Light, so 

 marvelous are its sunbursts of morning, its clear noonday 

 radiance from glacier-polished rocks and gleaming snows, 

 its golden rivers of sunset, its alpine moonlights and star- 

 lights, its glories of blossoms of every hue, but chiefly 

 white, blue, scarlet, golden, and all sorts of clear, vivid 

 colors. 



Wonderful are the peaceful mountain lakelets that find 

 places on no maps— pellucid, transparent, hidden in shel- 

 tered hollows of glacial valley-basins, at the tips of ancient 

 moraines, or strung like beads on mountain streams, as in 

 Lake Hollow in Tolumne Canon, where ten such lakes lie 

 close together. These snow-fed pools begin to throw off 

 the chains of winter in May, June or July, according to the 

 altitude, and then their margins suddenly run riot with a 

 most bewildering variety and multitude of plants. Thou- 

 sands of attractive lakelets exist in the Sierras ; in the Merced 

 district alone, Muir notes 131 of not less than five hundred 

 yards in circuit ; other thousands of hollows, once occupied 

 by lakes, have now become green and blossoming mea- 

 dows, while some are in the transition state — cold swamps 

 where the Droseras grow, and one may look for Darling- 

 tonia, or find in deeper channels the Nuphar polyse- 

 palum. 



The margins of these countless lakelets are soft with 

 Mosses, pale green Hypnums, silky and lustrous Dicra- 

 nums, dark Polytrichums and other Musci ; green and pur- 

 ple Sphagnums, slender, flat-branched Selaginellas, and a 

 multitude of as delicate plant-carpetings. In such wet 

 places rise the tall stems and graceful white perianths of 

 Spiranthes Romanzoffiana, the Sierra Ladies' Tresses, with 

 white and greenish Habenarias. Sometimes one finds the 

 white-racemed Hastingsia, Sagittaria variabilis, or the 

 Damasonium Californicum of Torrey, with many species 

 of Juncus in the water edges. In a few cases, the ripe, 

 salmon-colored capsules of the Bog Asphodel, Narthecium, 

 gleam over the lesser water plants ; and along the moister 

 levels, whole acres of tall Veratrums, or False Hellebore, 

 uplift their broad leaves and heavy spikes of dull cream- 

 colored and greenish flowers. Mingled with the Rushes 

 are bright green Quillworts, Iscetes, and the cordate-leaved 

 Caltha Leptosepala. Every inch of ground is occupied 

 with overflowing plant-life. 



Bright-hued Mountain Grasses, Stipas, Festucas, Trise- 

 tums, Bromi, Calamagrostes and many more give soft 

 hues of brown, purple and gold as they bloom and ripen 

 on the sunny slopes or beside the blue lakelets. Beetles, 

 ants, dragon-flies, Vanessas, Papilios and many other 

 species of butterflies in busy armies crawl and flutter 

 through the warm summer land; mountain quail and 

 grouse are in the thickets of dwarf Pines, Oaks, Poplars 

 and Willows. Robins, swallows, grosbeaks and goldfinches 

 are nesting or singing in tree-tops by rushing rivers and 

 waterfalls ; while the water ousel, swift bird-wonder, 

 flashes through the spray, and the saucy Douglas squirrel, 

 Sciurus Douglasi, makes a lively part of every scene. 



But I have hardly begun to describe the variety of plant- 

 life upon the shores of the lakelets in the alpine meadows 

 and on the descending rock slopes. Around such lakes 

 are vivid golden Ranunculi in many shades, Ranunculus 

 Andersonii, R. oxynotus, R. alismasfolius and others; pur- 

 ple-beaked Dodecatheons, dwarf Mimuli, yellow or pink, 

 with crimson-spotted or copper-red hoods ; bee-haunted 

 Limnanthes, white and pale yellow ; rose-tinted Claytonias ; 

 tall, fragrant Trifoliums, red, white or purple-flowered, 

 massed by dripping springs against still statelier Aralias, 

 Ferulas and Heracleums, or grouped with white and yel- 

 low Hosackias by the edges of splintered granite rocks, 

 while underfoot are nodding Pearlworts, modest little Stel- 



larias and Cerastiums and the water-loving Lobelia carno- 

 sula. Creeping Violas, white, yellow and blue, are blos- 

 soming by thousands in the warm half-shade ; under the 

 trees one may at rare times find the delicate Anemone mul- 

 tifida ; the Aconitum Fischeri lifts its pale blue flowers and 

 pubescent stems through acres of orange-yellow and red- 

 spotted Lilies, L. pardalinum, and near it is the pale lilac 

 of Clarkiarhomboidea. By some of these alpine lakes the 

 dwarf Willows are mingled with purple-flowering Kalmias, 

 fringes of Cassiope and fragrant Vacciniums, Symphoricarpi 

 and Loniceras, which by September add their glowing 

 white and orange-red berries to the reds and rose-purples 

 of the dwarf Mountain Ribes. 



If a mountain torrent falls into the lake hollow you shall 

 find many Saxifrages, white, creamy brown or purple, 

 hanging to the damp rocks. Primula suffrutescens will be 

 there also, and where the spray dashes are white-blossom- 

 ing Rubus leucodermis. On almost every sheltered, soil- 

 covered shelf of rock millions of creamy yellow and 

 purple-shaded Erythroniums begin to blossom as the snow 

 melts and linger until the lake-shores fairly waken. Hidden 

 at the bases of the crags are multitudes of Asters and 

 Aquilegias (A. truncata), and if one climbs far enough he 

 can find the large-flowered blue and white A. ccerulea. 



The blossoms of the hill-sides, ravines and rocks are so 

 many and so varied that every canon and lake-basin has 

 its distinctive features, and a complete list would be merely 

 a catalogue. Rose or flesh-colored Dicentras hide among 

 the grasses ; Silenes, pink, white, scarlet or purple, cluster 

 about rock points ; Castilleias, yellow-red and fire-tipped, 

 deepening to almost crimson ; vivid scarlet Zauschnerias 

 and crowded glowing masses of blue Lupines illuminate the 

 landscape ; white and rose-colored Phloxes ; Pentstemons 

 of pink, violet and blue ; close-knit corymbs of rose-hued 

 Spiraeas ; the almost prostrate, dense-clustered scorpioid 

 spikes of Spragueas ; silky, glistening cups of Lewisia re- 

 diviva — these, with an enormous number of wonderfully 

 glowing Compositas, clothe the dry, granite dust and fur- 

 rows of the dark rocks. Helianthi,.Wyethias, Erigerons, 

 Golden-rods, Heleniums, and many others great andsmall, 

 by lake-shores and streams and to the limits of alpine 

 vegetation, mark the sway of the Compositae in the Sierras. 

 Often the color-scheme is strongly blue and gold for miles, 

 for the tall Forget-me-nots, the lovely Gentians, such as 

 Gentiana Amarella, G simplex and G. calycosa, the fine 

 alpine Linums, Lupines, Larkspurs and other vividly blue 

 flowers quite hold their own with the rich Composite. 



Especially brilliant, also, are some of the alpine Ericaceae, 

 such as Bryanthus Breweri, that dwarf evergreen with 

 thick, obtuse, Heath-like leaves and saucer-shaped rose- 

 purple blossoms gleaming upon high and rocky peaks of 

 the Sierras. Another lovely Heath is the white or rose- 

 colored Cassiope, a suffrutescent evergreen, with finely 

 imbricated foliage. These grow far above the Oaks and 

 the dwarf, trailing Manzanitas, where Hemlock Spruces, 

 Tsuga Pattoniana, and mountain Pines, Pinus albicaulis 

 and P. monticola, are the outposts of the great Sierra forests. 

 Still one finds golden Composite, brighter and more lumi- 

 nous than ever, in great congregations close to the edges 

 of the glaciers. Again, as far down by the lake hollows, 

 the Mosses and other forms of lesser plant-life take the 

 place of the glowing hosts of the mid-Sierra. The Wood- 

 sias and larger Ferns disappear, but Pelteas, Allosori, 

 Cheilanthes and Cystopteris have grown in the shadows of 

 granite crags and in crevices of the giant mountains all the 

 way from the land of Lilies, of wild Sierra Roses and of 

 thickets of white-flowered Primus emarginata. On the gray 

 pinnacles, among sky-blue Flaxes, silvery Astragali, with 

 cream-white and purple flowers and mottled pods, rattle 

 sharply in the winds. Alpine Sages creep up from the 

 Nevada desert plateau and make the eastern horizon gray. 

 The blue and white Polemoniums, the hoary Lithospermum 

 pilosum and other flowers of the highest peaks are found 



here in gardens of their own. „, , „ „, . 



Niles, Calif. thanes H. Slunn. 



