10 TREES AND FLOWERS OF 



HOW THE PLANTS CAME TO YELLOW- 

 STONE PARK. 



People who come to Yellowstone Park to see the 

 geysers and the canyons (and these are, of course, 

 what most people come here to see) are taking a good 

 deal for granted. Not more here than elsewhere, to 

 be sure, for it is human nature to take for granted 

 the most familiar and essential things — air and wa- 

 ter, for example, or our families and friends. Things 

 that we never lack we are seldom very acutely 

 aware of. 



Certainly this is true of the trees and wild flow- 

 ers. We simply accept them as an inevitable part of 

 the landscape, and give them no credit for their im- 

 portance to our comfort and enjoyment. Yet if there 

 were no trees in the Park, if there were no wild flowers 

 and smaller plants, the place would be desert and ac- 

 cursed; a waste of barren rock, like the Thingvalla, 

 that dreary plain that guards the approach to the 

 geysers of Iceland; and instead of the tens of thou- 

 sands of visitors that throng the Park every year 

 only an occasional hardy traveller or determined scien- 

 tist would pass through the gates. The trees and 

 flowers are not the most important things about the 

 Yellowstone Park, but they are none the less an in- 

 dispensable part of it. 



If the vegetation of the Park is essential for the 

 enjoyment and comfort of visitors in general, it is an 

 exhaustless treasure and a continuous delight to all 

 lovers of trees and flowers. All imaginable types of 

 habitat and life conditions are present, and each of- 

 fers its appropriate display of plant life. Forests of 

 lodgepole pine dominate the rather thin, dry soil of 

 the park plateau, yielding place to fir and spruce in 

 the moister, richer ravines. Dry flats and hillsides 

 are gray with sagebrush, sometimes verging abruptly 

 on wet meadows rank with marsh-grasses and willow 



