WILD GARDENS OF THE YOSEMITE PARK 159 



the cliff gardens, however, are dependent on 

 summer showers, and though from the shallow- 

 ness of the soil beds they are often dry, they still 

 display a surprising number of bright flowers, — 

 scarlet zauschneria, purple bush penstemon, mints, 

 gilias, and bosses of glowing golden bahia. Nor 

 is there any lack of commoner plants ; the homely 

 yarrow is often found in them, and sweet clover 

 and honeysuckle for the bees. 



In the upper canons, where the walls are in- 

 clined at so low an angle that they are loaded 

 with moraine material, through which perennial 

 streams percolate in broad diffused currents, 

 there are long wavering garden beds, that seem 

 to be descending through the forest like cascades, 

 their fluent lines suggesting motion, swaying 

 from side to side of the forested banks, surging 

 up here and there over island-like boulder piles, 

 or dividing and flowing around them. In some 

 of these floral cascades the vegetation is chiefly 

 sedges and grasses ruffled with willows ; in others, 

 showy flowers like those of the lily gardens on 

 the main divides. Another curious and pictu- 

 resque series of wall gardens are made by thin 

 streams that ooze slowly from moraines and slip 

 gently over smooth glaciated slopes. From par- 

 ticles of sand and mud they carry, a pair of lobe- 

 shaped sheets of soil an inch or two thick are 

 gradually formed, one of them hanging down 

 from the brow of the slope, the other leaning up 



