ragrance to
the breeze. It is now becoming scarce in the most accessible parts of
its range on account of the high price paid for its bulbs by gardeners
through whom it has been distributed far and wide over the flower-loving
world. For, on account of its pure color and delicate, delightful
fragrance, all lily lovers at once adopted it as a favorite.

The principal shrubs are manzanita and ceanothus, several species of
each, azalea, Rubus nutkanus, brier rose, choke-cherry philadelphus,
calycanthus, garrya, rhamnus, etc.

The manzanita never fails to attract particular attention. The
species common in the Valley is usually about six or seven feet high,
round-headed with innumerable branches, red or chocolate-color bark,
pale green leaves set on edge, and a rich profusion of small, pink,
narrow-throated, urn-shaped flowers, like those of arbutus. The knotty,
crooked, angular branches are about as rigid as bones, and the red bark
is so thin and smooth on both trunk and branches, they look as if they
had been peeled and polished and painted. In the spring large areas
on the mountain up to a height of eight or nine thousand feet are
brightened with the rosy flowers, and in autumn with their red fruit.
The pleasantly acid berries, about the size of peas, look like little
apples, and a hungry mountaineer is glad to eat them, though half their
bulk is made up of hard seeds. Indians, bears, coyotes, foxes, birds and
other mountain people live on them for weeks and months. The different
species of ceanothus usually associated with manzanita are flowery
fragrant and altogether delightful shrubs, growing in glorious
abundance, not only in the Valley, but high up in the forest on sunny or
half-shaded ground. In the sugar-pine woods the most beautiful species
is C. integerrimus, often called Californian lilac, or deer brush. It
is five or six feet high with slender branches, glossy foliage, and
abundance of blue flowers in close, showy panicles. Two species, C.
prostrates and C. procumbens, spread smooth, blue-flowered mats and
rugs beneath the pines, and offer fine beds to tired mountaineers. The
commonest species, C. cordulatus, is most common in the silver-fir
woods. It is white-flowered and thorny, and makes dense thickets of
tangled chaparral, difficult to wade through or to walk over. But it is
pressed flat every winter by ten or fifteen feet of snow. The western
azalea makes glorious beds of bloom along the river bank and me