WILD GARDENS OF THE YOSEMITE PARK 149 



willows, spreads thinner carpets, the down- 

 pressed matted leaves profusely sprinkled with 

 pink bells ; and on higher sandy slopes you will 

 find several alpine species o£ eriogonum with 

 gorgeous bossy masses of yellow bloom, and the 

 lovely Arctic daisy with many blessed compan- 

 ions ; charming plants, gentle mountaineers, 

 Nature's darlings, which seem always the finer 

 the higher and stormier their homes. 



Many interesting ferns are distributed over 

 the Park from the foothills to a little above the 

 timber line. The greater number are rock ferns, 

 pellsea, cheilanthes, polypodium, adiantum, wood- 

 sia, cryptogramme, etc., with small tufted fronds, 

 lining glens and gorges and fringing the cliffs 

 and moraines. The most important of the 

 larger species are woodwardia, aspidium, asple- 

 nium, and the common pteris. Woodwardia 

 radicans is a superb fern five to eight feet high, 

 growing in vaselike clumps where the ground is 

 level, and on slopes in a regular thatch, frond 

 over frond, like shingles on a roof. Its range 

 in the Park is from the western boundary up to 

 about five thousand feet, mostly on benches of 

 the north walls of canons watered by small out- 

 spread streams. It is far more abundant in the 

 Coast Mountains beneath the noble redwoods, 

 where it attains a height of ten to twelve feet. 

 The aspidiums are mostly restricted to the moist 

 parts of the lower forests, Asplenium filix-fce- 



