In many places throughout the mountains of the Tahoe region there are
clumps or groves of wild cherry (_Prunus Demissa_, Walpers), the
cherries generally ripening in September. But if one expects the ripe
red _wild_ cherries to have any of the delicious richness and
sweetness of the ripe Queen Anne or other good variety he is doomed
to sad disappointment. For they are sour and bitter--bitter as
quinine,--and that is perhaps the reason their juice has been
extracted and made into medicine supposed to have extraordinary tonic
and healing virtue.

The elder is often found (_Sambucus Glauca_, Nutt.), sometimes
quite tall and at other times broken down by the snow, but bravely
covering its bent and gnarled trunks and branches with dense foliage
and cream-white blossom-clusters. The berries are always attractive to
the eye in their purple tint, with the creamy blush on them, and happy
is that traveler who has an expert make for him an elderberry pie, or
distill the rich cordial the berries make.

Another feature of the chaparral often occupies the field entirely
to itself, viz., the chamisal or greasewood (_Adenostoma
fasciculatum_, Hook, and Arn.). Its small clustered and needle-like
leaves, richly covered with large, feathery panicles of tiny
blossoms, give it an appearance not unlike Scotch heather, and make a
mountainside dainty and beautiful.

The California buckeye (_Aesculus Californica_, Nutt.) is also
found, especially upon stream banks or on the moist slopes of
the canyons. Its light gray limbs, broad leaves, and long, white
flower-spikes make it an attractive shrub or tree (for it often
reaches forty feet in height), and when the leaves drop, as they do
early, the skeleton presents a beautiful and delicate network against
the deep azure of the sky.

Another feature of the chaparral is the scrub oak. In 1913 the bushes
were almost free from acorns. They generally appear only every other
year, and when they do bear the crop is a wonderfully numerous one.

A vast amount of wild lilac (_Ceanothus Velutinus_) is found on
all the slopes. It generally blooms in June and then the hillsides are
one fragrant and glowing mass of vivid white tinged with the creamy
hue that adds so much charm to the flowers.

The year 1913, however, was a peculiar year, throughout, for plant
life. In the middle of September in Page's Meadows a large patch
of ceanothus was in full bloom, either revealing a remarkably late
flowering, or