WILD GARDENS OF THE YOSEMITE PARK 167 



heights. The most beautiful are the phloxes 

 (douglasii and caespitosum), and the red-flowered 

 silene, with innumerable flowers hiding the 

 leaves. Though herbaceous plants, like the 

 trees and shrubs, are dwarfed as they ascend, 

 two of these mountain dwellers, Hulsea algida 

 and Polemonium confertum, are notable excep- 

 tions. The yellow-flowered hulsea is eight to 

 twelve inches high, stout, erect, — the leaves, 

 three to six inches long, secreting a rosiny, fra- 

 grant gum, standing up boldly on the grim 

 lichen-stained crags, and never looking in the 

 least tired or discouraged. Both the ray and 

 disk flowers are yellow ; the heads are nearly 

 two inches wide, and are eagerly sought for by 

 roving bee mountaineers. The polemonium is 

 quite as luxuriant and tropical-looking as its 

 companion, about the same height, glandular, 

 fragrant, its blue flowers closely packed in eight 

 or ten heads, twenty to forty in a head. It is 

 never far from hulsea, growing at elevations of 

 between eleven and thirteen thousand feet wher- 

 ever a little hollow or crevice favorably situated 

 with a handful of wind-driven soil can be found. 



From these frosty Arctic sky gardens you 

 may descend in one straight swoop to the abronia, 

 mentzelia, and Oenothera gardens of Mono, where 

 the sunshine is warm enough for palms. 



But the greatest of all the gardens is the belt 

 of forest trees, profusely covered in the spring 



