TEL E 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
Vol. V.— APRIL, 1871.— No. 2. 
ece TORI TDN 
THE SPRING FLOWERS OF COLORADO. 
` BY E. L. GREENE. 
Ir is the tenth of April, and although the skies are clear, and 
the sun’s rays warm enough for early June, yet the Colorado land- 
scape shows no indications of spring. The mountain range 
which fills the western horizon, is still clad in all the dazzling 
white of wintry snows, and remains a picture of beauty and sub- 
limity quite indescribable. The plains are brown and bare, as 
they were during most of the winter. Here and there, tufts of the 
evergreen Soap-weed (Yucca angustifolia), or matted masses of 
Prickly Pear, show their perennial verdure, and furnish the only 
conspicuous signs of plant life. No April showers have fallen to 
revive the grasses, and the herds of long-horned Texas cattle graze 
contentedly upon the sere remains of last year’s growth. Yet at 
this early date, there are wild flowers, modest, and lovely April 
flowers, for the eye that knows where to look for them. 
Extending all along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, 
is a series of high and picturesque table-lands, and below and 
among them, numerous grassy hills and knolls, all destitute of 
trees, often rocky, and apparently as barren as are the plains 
around. On sunny slopes, and in sheltered nooks among these 
foot-hills, we find our earliest flowers. By the first week in April, 
there appears on the very summits of these grassy knolls a real 
beauty, which, as it yet lacks an English name, may bear its Latin 
one, Townsendia (T. sericea). The plant belongs to the family 
" Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by the PEABODY ACADEMY OF 
SCIENCE, in tl Mee of the Caregen of Congress, at Washington. 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. V- 5 (65) 
