THE ALPINE FLORA OF COLORADO. 735 
Castilleia pallida, or pale painted cup; for in the marshes below, 
say at an altitude of seven thousand feet, and from that point 
_ upwards to near the timber line, wherever the plant grows, it bears — 
handsome pale cream-colored flowers. Also above the timber'line 
where it again appears and continues in a very reduced form to 
flourish at twelve thousand feet, the flowers are pallid again, 
though with a more decidedly yellowish cast, in the very dwarf 
and high-alpine variety. 
7 One seldom meets with such exceedingly beautiful wild flowers 
= asare found in just this region of the last of the trees. From 
= their sources on the borders of snow fields just above, noisy 
streamlets corhe dancing down, their banks often fairly crowded, 
and their foaming waters hidden by the luxuriant foliage, and 
pendent blue flower-clusters of Mertensia Sibirica. Where the 
stream is broader and the water shallow, the splendid Primula 
Parryi almost startles you as you come suddenly upon it, so 
_ tropically rich are its light green, showy leaves, and its heavy 
umbels of large, magenta-purple flowers. Altogether the finest 
plant of the Rocky Mountains, it seems almost strange that it 
should have selected its home so near the everlasting snows, and 
the Mississippi; but this Alpine species bears only one flower 
+a stem, the color of which is bluish outside and white within. 
or must we omit to mention the beautiful perennial larkspur 
phinium elatum), whose deep blue spikes are another decided 
ent to this region; nor the two very pretty purple-flowered 
ecies of Pedicularis (P. Greenlandica and P. Sudetica); nor 
“arnassia fimbriata with its beautifully fringed white petals. 
th drier soils, among the now dwarfed and scattering pines 
(Pinus contorta and P. aristata), we find plenty of a very pretty, 
Small, blue-flowered Polemonium (P. pulchellum), and likewise a 
tosa 
