736 THE ALPINE FLORA OF COLORADO. 
variety of EHriogonum umbellatum, with cream-colored umbels. 
And here we must leave unmentioned almost countless species and 
varieties of Senecio, several interesting saxifrages and crowfoots, 
and daisy-like Erigerons, and pass upward toward the snows. 
Leaving below the last of the stunted specimens of spruce and 
pine and rising to those vast, treeless, grassy slopes that lie just 
above the limit of trees, we enter upon a new field. Woody plants 
are yet represented by straggling willows of several species, 
growing possibly to the height of one or two feet, and often 
monopolizing considerable tracts of land. One may chance also 
to find a patch of the rare, high-alpine laurel, attaining a height 
of perhaps one inch, but bearing beautiful large red flowers. This 
is supposed to be a form of Kalmia glauca. It is however seldom 
met with. Of herbaceous flowering plants, here at an altitude of 
twelve thousand feet, there yet remain some splendid examples. 
Polemonium confertum, in its typical form, is one of the finest of 
this handsome genus; yet this is surpassed by a variety (P. con- 
fertum, var. mellitum) of the same species. The first mentioned 
form, growing on bleak, open ground, either level or sloping 
northward or westward, is smaller every way, except in the dark- 
blue corolla, The variety grows taller, has a luxuriant foliage, 
and usually pale or almost white flowers. It has gained some 
excellent points of character by selecting for its abiding places 
the shelter of high rocks, on the south sides where it is well 
protected from cold winds and driving storms of snow, which not 
unfrequently visit these sublime heights, even in August, the 
flower month; and that, to the greater inconvenience of flower 
gatherers, than of the flowers themselves. The largest plant of 
these altitudes is a coarse, hoary composite (Actinella grandiflora), 
rowing some eight or ten inches high, and producing heads ©} 
yellow flowers as large as those of the wild sunflower of the 
plains. Here, where so few things rise to the height of more than 
two or three inches, this species becomes very conspicuous. It 
usually grows on very exposed situations, and the large heads of 
flowers, borne upon stout and well clothed stems, turn their backs 
to the storms, and remain stoically indifferent to the peltings of 
every sleeting blast that sweeps over their dreary abode. Merten- 
sia alpina is one of the most elegant of these tenants of the 
heights. With its stems, three or four inches high, bearing 
bunches of deep blue, nodding flowers, it looks remarkably pretty, 
