The colors show finely when thus held
to view on the slopes; patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white,
blending around the edges, the whole appearing at a little distance like
a map colored in sections.
Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly
evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten
feet high; manzanita and ceanothus of several species, mixed with
rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia, cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in
shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many species of hosackia, clover,
monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.
The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes,
inclosing level valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a
great profusion of sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but these
are, in great part, already lost to the bees by cultivation.
Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from
near the Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of
these majestic trees the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly woodwardia
and aspidiums, with only a few flowering plants--oxalis, trientalis,
erythronium, fritillaria, smilax, and other shade-lovers.
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