138 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



esting to me. The most conspicuous plant of these timberhne 

 areas is a taU hHaceous plant (Xerophylhiin tenax). It grows 

 three or four feet high and consists of a bunch of rough grass- 

 like leaves from the midst of which springs the slender flower 

 spike. Somewhere on this spike is a puff of snow-white blos- 

 soms as large as your two fists. Above the ball of bloom are 

 the undeveloped flower blossoms, and below it are the ripen- 

 ing seed pods and withered corollas. It blooms for several 

 weeks, the blossoming beginning at the bottom of the spike 

 and climbing up until it ends at the stmimit. 



On a grassy slope, fresh and green as a Kansas prairie in 

 May, I came upon some Calochorti — Mariposa tulips, they call 

 them in California : only these were of a kind I have never 

 seen in the Golden State. An examination of the flowers 

 showed them to be Calochortus Lyalli. This flower is very 

 much like the Calochortus called in Utah the "Sego Lily" and 

 the state flower of that commonwealth. A little farther on 

 were many bright yellow Erythronhiins. I suppose they were 

 Erythroiiiinn grmidifloniin though they did not look quite like 

 the flowers of that species I had been familiar with in North- 

 ern Idaho. Not far from the Erythroniitms I came to my first 

 snow. It was a field some acres in extent, much discolored 

 and soft from the sunbeams which were beating down upon it 

 with almost tropic heat. Several kinds of plants grew almost 

 up to the very edge of the melting snowfield. The little one- 

 flowered Dicentra, and the alpine phlox w^ere the most 

 abundaiit of these flowers crowding upon the edges of the 

 snow. 



I crossed that snowfield and several others and made camp 

 beside a little icy stream that burst noisily out from underneath 

 a large field of snow. Back of this snowfield was what I at first 

 though was a very steep and rocky cliff. I afterward found 

 that it was not a cliff at all, but the terminal moraine of a tre- 

 mendous glacier which swept down from the very crest of the 



