Arizona Gardens 233 
few birds and here are some flowers withal, 
and here one may saunter awhile and compare 
this garden in the yellow pine belt at seven 
thousand feet with the cactus garden of the 
desert. 
On the first of May the palo verde was 
blooming on the desert and the thistle poppy 
in the dry bed of Castle Creek, but with the 
exception of the saguaros and the chollas, most 
of the flowers had come and gone and the 
ground looked parched, singed one might say. 
A week later in the Coconino forest the snow 
is but melted from the ground and there is still 
snow in the air. All the way from the little 
desert station it has been a gradual change 
from a Lower Sonoran to an Upper Sonoran 
and Transition Zone, and it is no surprise 
therefore to find the few flowers in bloom on 
the rim of the cafion of a distinctly mountain 
type with all the charm of low-growing alpine 
plants. 
Thick mats of alpine phlox, prone upon the 
ground, suggest patches of snow. There is a 
white cress no higher than a chickadee, a tufted 
pink that hugs the earth, and a yellow and 
purple pedicularis of similar habit, a dwarf 
forget-me-not, a small castilleia, and the 
modest woodland star. Near the rim of the 
