The snow-plant is a curiosity and attracts by its brilliancy of color. The plant and bloom are blood-red, but this herb is as cold and rigid as an icicle. It is not a parasite, but is isolated and appears to hold itself aloof from all the world. When caught by late snows it makes a startling figure, but it does not grow up through the snow.
In the alpine heights are many healthy plants: the lovely arctic daisy, phlox, gentian, lupine, potentilla, harebell, mountain columbine, astragalus, and numerous other bright flowers. They grow in clusters and in large ragged gardens, and in places are low-growing and extremely dwarfed.
Besides its wild small plants and the blooming shrubbery the Park has a glorious wealth of tree blossom. The hemlocks, pines, firs, and spruces have a jeweled wealth of blue, purple, red, and yellow bloom.
May and June are the months most crowded with blossoms, but many come in the autumn, mingling serenely with the calm, sunny days, the evergreen groves, the tanned grass, and the masses of red and yellow leaves. In May and June the waterfalls are at their best, and the birds are most songful.
The Yosemite National Park is perhaps the most delightful region in all the world for the study of plant life. The wide variety of conditions here found, ranging from the hot and desiccated slopes of the brush-clad foothills to the cold, bleak summits above timber line, the abode of glaciers and perpetual snow, gives to the flora an exceedingly diverse and interesting character. Innumerable springs, creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes provide suitable habitats for moisture-loving plants. Rocky outcroppings, enormous cliffs, and gravelly ridges accommodate species adapted to such situations. The irregular topography yields southward facing slopes which receive the full effect of the sun's rays, as well as northward slopes where the sun's rays are little felt, where it is therefore cool, moist, and shady. The altitude ranges from two thousand five hundred feet in the foothill belt to thirteen thousand and ninety feet along the crest of the Sierra Nevada. All of these factors conspire to produce a remarkably varied and interesting vegetation.
The richness of this flora is indicated by the nine hundred and fifty-five species and varieties here described. The total number represented in the Yosemite National Park is considerably greater, since the grasses, sedges, and rushes are here omitted. Including an estimate for these, it is safe to assume that the number of species and varieties of flowering plants and ferns to be found within the one thousand one hundred and twenty-four square miles of the park is not less than about one thousand two hundred. ("A Yosemite Flora," by Harvey Monroe Hall and Carlotta Case Hall.)
4. THE REALM OF FALLING WATER
The Yosemite National Park is enlivened and splendidly enriched with mountain-high waterfalls and with wildly coasting and cascading streams. These world-famous falls gain an added attractiveness through the magnificence of the walls over which they plunge. In places the walls, clean-cut and smooth, rise sheer for more than one thousand feet. Here and there the line of a wall is broken with a vast niche or columnar buttress.
UPPER AND LOWER YOSEMITE FALLS
Total fall 2600 feet