And here too we find the
best of the garden meadows. They lie level on the tops of the dividing
ridges, or sloping on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent
forest. Some of these meadows are in great part occupied by
_Veratrumalba_, which here grows rank and tall, with boat-shaped
leaves thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide, ribbed like those of
cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with tall larkspurs
and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of
castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets and
daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily--_L. parvum_.
The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I ever saw
of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for it is seven to
eight feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty flowers
or more over one's head, while it stands out in the open ground with
just enough of grass and other plants about it to make a fringe for
its feet and show it off to best advantage.
A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a Silver Fir lily garden
makes a glorious campground, especially where the slope is toward the
east and opens a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the
range.
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