154 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



them open ; the others had faded or were still in 

 the bud. This famous lily is distributed over 

 the sunny portions of the sugar-pine woods, never 

 in large garden companies like pardalinum, but 

 widely scattered, standing up to the waist in 

 dense ceanothus and manzanita chaparral, waving 

 its lovely flowers above the blooming wilderness 

 of brush, and giving their fragrance to the 

 breeze. These stony, thorny jungles are about 

 the last places in the mountains in which one 

 would look for lilies. But though they toil not 

 nor spin, like other people under adverse circum- 

 stances, they have to do the best they can. Be- 

 cause their large bulbs are good to eat they are 

 dug up by Indians and bears; therefore, like 

 hunted animals, they seek refuge in the chapar- 

 ral, where among the boulders and tough tangled 

 roots they are comparatively safe. This is the 

 favorite Sierra lily, and it is now growing in all 

 the best parks and gardens of the world. 



The showiest gardens in the Park lie imbedded 

 in the silver fir forests on the top of the main 

 dividing ridges or hang like gayly colored scarfs 

 down their sides. Their wet places are in great 

 part taken up by veratrum, a robust broad-leaved 

 plant determined to be seen, and habenaria and 

 spiranthes ; the drier parts by tall columbines, 

 larkspurs, castilleias, lupines, hosackias, erigerons, 

 valerian, etc., standing deep in grass, with violets 

 here and there around the borders. But the 



