But If Your Meadow Should
Be Outside The Forest Reserve, And The Sheep Have Been There, You
Will Find Little
But the shorter, paler G. newberryii, and
in the matted sods of the little tongues of greenness that lick up
Among the pines along the watercourses, white, scentless, nearly
stemless, alpine violets.
At about the nine thousand foot level and in the summer there
will be hosts of rosy-winged dodecatheon, called shooting-stars,
outlining the crystal tunnels in the sod. Single flowers have
often a two-inch spread of petal, and the full, twelve blossomed
heads above the slender pedicels have the airy effect of wings.
It is about this level one looks to find the largest lakes
with thick ranks of pines bearing down on them, often swamped in
the summer floods and paying the inevitable penalty for such
encroachment. Here in wet coves of the hills harbors that crowd of
bloom that makes the wonder of the Sierra canons.
They drift under the alternate flicker and gloom of the windy
rooms of pines, in gray rock shelters, and by the ooze of blind
springs, and their juxtapositions are the best imaginable. Lilies
come up out of fern beds, columbine swings over meadowsweet, white
rein-orchids quake in the leaning grass. Open swales,
where in wet years may be running water, are plantations of false
hellebore (Veratrum californicum), tall, branched candelabra
of greenish bloom above the sessile, sheathing, boat-shaped leaves,
semi-translucent in the sun. A stately plant of the lily family,
but why "false?" It is frankly offensive in its character, and its
young juices deadly as any hellebore that ever grew.
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