All private claims
within these bounds should be gradually extinguished by purchase by the
Government. The big tree, leaving all its higher uses out of the count,
is a tree of life to the dwellers of the plain dependent on irrigation,
a never-failing spring, sending living waters to the lowland. For every
grove cut down a stream is dried up. Therefore all California is crying,
"Save the trees of the fountains." Nor, judging by the signs of the
times, is it likely that the cry will cease until the salvation of all
that is left of Sequoia gigantea is made sure.
Chapter 8
The Flowers
Yosemite was all one glorious flower garden before plows and scythes and
trampling, biting horses came to make its wide open spaces look like
farmers' pasture fields. Nevertheless, countless flowers still bloom
every year in glorious profusion on the grand talus slopes, wall benches
and tablets, and in all the fine, cool side-canyons up to the rim of the
Valley, and beyond, higher and higher, to the summits of the peaks. Even
on the open floor and in easily-reached side-nooks many common flowering
plants have survived and still make a brave show in the spring and early
summer. Among these we may mention tall oenotheras, Pentstemon lutea,
and P. Douglasii with fine blue and red flowers; Spraguea, scarlet
zauschneria, with its curious radiant rosettes characteristic of the
sandy flats; mimulus, eunanus, blue and white violets, geranium,
columbine, erythraea, larkspur, collomia, draperia, gilias, heleniums,
bahia, goldenrods, daisies, honeysuckle; heuchera, bolandra, saxifrages,
gentians; in cool canyon nooks and on Clouds' Rest and the base of Starr
King Dome you may find Primula suffrutescens, the only wild primrose
discovered in California, and the only known shrubby species in the
genus.
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