upon miles of color, was the Poppies. Of so deep an orange 
they were that they gave the desert the appearance as though 
swept b}'- flame, and the wind, swaying their glistening cups, 
did much to add to this illusion. Of course your one idea was 
to get down into this sea of color and wade right through it, 
and there among the Poppies jou were met with some delight- 
ful surprises. As you pushed their stems aside you found the 
desert was not carpeted by them alone, but also by a dwarf 
blue Lupine and by patches of a dwarf white Collinsia, inter- 
lining as it were, the Poppies' golden veil. Also growing there 
we found Malacothrix gldbrata, in appearance a sort ol! 
glorified Dandelion ; also a pure white cousin of the Tidy-tips, 
and what, I think, gave us the greatest joy, was discovering 
little colonies of the Gilia known as "desert snow," with petals 
tightly furled to open only at sundown. We gathered a bunch 
oi them to experiment as to their opening at home under the 
evening lamp, and to our great satisfaction we had the 
pleasure of seeing at close range these, of all the desert 
flowers, the most exquisitely delicate and ethereal. 
On the trip to the Mojave Desert it seemed as though one 
experienced the climax first, while the view of individual 
flowers came afterward; but in visiting the Colorado Desert 
the case was reversed. At this time the many varieties of 
flowers Avhich bordered the road held our attention ; the climax 
was to come later on. Here we saw again a charming yellow 
Malacothrix resembling the one on the Mojave, but of a 
difiPerent species. There were white and j'-ellow Pin-cushion 
plants known respectively as ''mourning bride" and "golden 
girls"; a large white Primrose, its spreading blossoms close 
against the ground; tiny white Desert Stars; the sweet-scented 
Encelia farino.ta Avith flowers like Coreopsis; Wild Heliotrope 
in great purple clumps ; delicate Baby-blue-eyes, Tidy-tips, 
fringed Gilias, Brodiaea, Canterbury Bells, Thistle Sage (a flower 
of gray velvet thorns and blue chill'on, if I may so describe it), 
tall stalks of Wild Delphinium rivaling our garden hybrids in 
height and color; wild white Forget-me-nots, yellow Fiddle- 
necks — an endless and bewildering number of flowers wiiich 
lured one on and on. 
There was one note of color that became more and more 
predominant as we approached Palm Springs, and that was 
tlie pink of the Abronias or Sand Verbenas, which occurred in 
ever increasing patches, the intensity of their color heightened 
by the gray of the desert sand. And indeed these patches of 
color were only the prelude to the climax Avhich was to be 
reached ten miles further on in the neighborhood of Indio, 
where all other colors were submerged into miles and miles 
of deep rose pink glowing and changing in the varying lights. 
79 
