66 = THE SPRING FLOWERS OF COLORADO. 
of Composite, an order which has not the charm of furnishing 
many early flowers, but which displays its beauties in late summer 
or in autumn. Even our Townsendia forms its flower buds and its 
foliage in the fall. The plant is almost destitute of a stem, and 
the narrow silky leaves form a dense tuft two or three inches broad, 
just upon the surface of the ground. Nestling closely among the 
pretty leaves are five or six rather large daisy-like flowers. The 
rays are either white or rose-color, and the center of each head is 
yellow, as is commonly the case in the compound flowers. There 
grows with this another species of Townsendia (T. Fendleri), 
smaller and more delicate, with more numerous heads, but it flow- 
ers nearly a month later. These very pretty plants are well 
worthy of a place in our gardens, though they would perhaps be 
difficult to rear in any other than their native localities. By the 
fifteenth of the month Viola Nuttallii appears on the sunny hill- 
sides, a fine yellow violet, with its petals prettily painted outside 
with reddish brown. With it Mertensia obtusifolia hangs out its 
pendant clusters of light blue. 
Passing beyond the foot-hills and entering some mountain gulch 
or cañon, we find the rocky slopes all yellow in some places with 
the flowers of the Rocky Mountain Barberry. Though a con- 
gener of the barberry of the Eastern States and Canada, it is a 
trailing evergreen shrub, and the flowers are succeeded by hand- 
some blue berries like frost grapes. This is Berberis aquifolium of 
the authors. Higher up among the rocks are the large pale purple 
flowers of Anemone patens, one of the finest of Rocky Mountain 
plants, but it is quite common as far eastward as Wisconsin, on 
bleak, gravelly hills. With it in the mountains of Colorado, grows 
a modest little cruciferous plant with white flowers (Thlaspi 
Fendleri) ; also a peculiar species of crowfoot (Ranunculus glaber- 
ninus), all of which are among the first flowers to, appear. 
By the twentieth of April, the zealous flower hunter will be am- 
ply rewarded for his toil, if he ventures to the top of some one of 
the table mountains. The task will indeed not be an easy one, for 
many tiresome stages must be made, up steep declivities, and 
among sharp and rugged rocks, and over what from the base may 
seem almost insurmountable, the high and almost unbroken wall 
of perpendicular rock, which invariably encircles the summits of 
these table mountains. High among these sublime formations, 
which stand pictured against the sky, like giant castle works, wild 
