Part 60

ALPINE PHLOX.

Phlox Douglasii, Hook. Phlox or Polemonium Family.

Plants forming cushion-like tufts; three or four inches high. Leaves.--Needle-like; six lines or less long; with shorter ones crowded in the axils. Flowers.--Pink, lilac, or white; sessile; terminating the branchlets. Calyx.--Five-cleft. Corolla.--Salver-form; with five-lobed border. Stamens.--Five; on the tube of the corolla. Ovary.--Three-celled. Style three-lobed. Hab.--The Sierras, from Mariposa County northward and eastward.

This delightful little flower may be found in the Sierras at an altitude of from five to ten thousand feet. It loves the open sunshine of the cool mountain heights, and with its cushiony tufts clothes many a bit of granite soil with beauty. It seems undaunted by its stern surroundings, and lifts its innocent eyes confidingly to the skies which bend gently over it--those skies

"So fathomless and pure, as if All loveliest azure things have gone To heaven that way--the flowers, the sea,-- And left their color there alone."

PINK MONKEY-FLOWER.

Mimulus Lewisii, Pursh. Figwort Family.

Stems.--Slender; eighteen inches or so high. Leaves.--Sessile; oblong-ovate to lanceolate; denticulate; somewhat viscid. Peduncles.--Elongated. Corolla.--Eighteen lines to two inches long; with tube exceeding the calyx and five ample spreading ciliate lobes; rose-color or paler, with usually a darker stripe down the center of each lobe. Ridges of lower lobe yellow and spotted; bearded. Stamens.--Included. (See Mimulus.) Hab.--The Sierras, from Central California northward and eastward to Montana.

One of the most beautiful of all our monkey-flowers is this charming species, which is found along the cold streams of the Sierras. Its large flowers have a fragile, delicate look, and the light stems and leaves are of an exquisite green.

I remember coming upon a delightful company of these blossoms, in a little emerald meadow upon the margin of one of those alpine lakelets which nestle among the granite crags. They seemed the most fitting flowers for just such a high, pure atmosphere.

SIERRA PRIMROSE.

Primula suffrutescens, Gray. Primrose Family.

Leaves.--Wedge-shaped, an inch or so long; clustered at the ends of the branches. Flower-stems.--Several inches high. Umbel several-flowered. Calyx.--Five-cleft. Corolla.--Salver-shaped; an inch or less across; deep rose-color, with a yellow eye. Stamens.--High on the corolla-throat opposite its lobes. Ovary.--One-celled. Style slender. Hab.--The Sierras.

If one takes his alpenstock in hand and climbs to the snow line in late summer, he is apt to be rewarded by the charming flowers of the Sierra primrose. The little plants grow in the drip of the snow-banks, where the melting ice gradually liberates the tufts of evergreen leaves. The glowing flowers look as though they might have caught and held the last rosy reflection of the sunset upon the snow above them.

PRIDE OF THE MOUNTAINS.

Pentstemon Menziesii, var. Newberryi, Gray. Figwort Family.

Stems.--Six inches to a foot high; woody at base. Leaves.--Ovate, obovate, or oblong; an inch or less long; leathery. Peduncles.--Usually one-flowered, forming a short, glandular-pubescent raceme. Corolla.--Bright rose-pink; an inch long. Anthers.--White-woolly; with divergent cells. (See Pentstemon.) Hab.--The High Sierras of Central California.

This charming Pentstemon is one of the most gracious flowers to be found in the Sierras in late summer. Upon banks overhanging the streams, or growing at great heights under the open sky, it makes many a rock-shelf gay with its brilliant pink blossoms.

We wonder how it can possibly subsist upon the hard, glittering granite; but there the mystery of its life continues from day to day, and there it cheerfully produces its masses of bright flowers, which gladden the weary climber to these snowy heights.

This species of Pentstemon is well marked by its white-woolly anthers, which almost fill the throat. Northward it passes into the typical P. Menziesii, which has flowers from violet-blue to pink-purple.

LESSINGIA.

Lessingia leptoclada, Gray. Composite Family.

Finely white-woolly. Stems.--From a few inches to two feet high, with numerous, almost filiform branchlets, bearing few or solitary heads of pink or white flowers. Lower leaves.--Spatulate; sparingly toothed; withering early. Upper leaves.--Lanceolate, or linear and entire; sessile; uppermost diminished into remote, subulate bracts. Heads.--Five- to twenty-flowered. Of tubular disk-flowers only. Outer flowers much larger. Involucre.--Silky hairy; broadly campanulate; with imbricated, appressed bracts. Hab.--Widespread.

In late summer the pink Lessingia is apparent along dry roadsides or embankments, where its blossoms make charming masses of soft color. It is quite abundant in the Yosemite, especially in the lower end of the valley.

L. Germanorum, Cham., found plentifully from San Diego to San Francisco, has yellow flowers.

ELEPHANTS' HEADS.

Pedicularis Groenlandica, Retz. Figwort Family.

Stems.--Tall and slender; smooth. Leaves.--Alternate; lanceolate in outline; pinnately parted into linear-lanceolate, serrate divisions; diminishing upward into the flower-bracts. Flowers.--Pink; in a dense spike several inches long. Calyx.--Five-toothed. Corolla.--With short tube and bilabiate limb. Upper lip with a long beak, like an elephant's trunk; lower three-lobed, deflexed. Stamens.--Four. Filaments and style filiform; sheathed in the beak. Ovary.--Two-celled. Hab.--The Sierras from King's River northward; and eastward to Hudson's Bay.