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"Here another task will begin next month," the doctor observed. "These are salvias, pentstemons, and antirrhinums, or snapdragons, planted very thick for the purpose. Humble-bees bore holes through their base, to save the labor of climbing in and out of the flowers, and we don't quite know yet why some hive-bees discover and utilize these holes at once, while others never do.
Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season, most of the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up simultaneously, and bloom together at about the same height above the ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of Salvia carduacea, the king of the mints.
Beautiful lichens enliven the faces of the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks there are a few tufts of alpine daisies, wall-flowers and pentstemons; but, notwithstanding these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as a whole is almost as honeyless as the icy summit, and its lower edge may be taken as the honey-line.
Rosebushes, towering far above one's head, loaded with bloom; shrubs of several kinds, equally burdened by delicate white or pink blossoms; the ground covered with foot-high pentstemons, blue and lavender, in which the buds fairly get in each other's way; and a curious plant primrose, I believe which opens every morning, a few inches from the ground, a large white blossom like the magnolia, turns it deep pink, and closes it before night; several kinds of yellow flowers; wild geraniums, with a look of home in their daintily penciled petals; above all, the wonderful golden columbine.
The roadside was gay with flowers, gillias and mountain balm; high pink and purple spikes, like foxgloves, which they were told were pentstemons; painters' brush, whose green tips seemed dipped in liquid vermilion, and masses of the splendid wild poppies.
The very pleasantest moment of the visit perhaps came on that last afternoon, when Geoff got her to himself for once, and took her up a trail where she had not yet been, in search of scarlet pentstemons to carry back to St. Helen's.
the primrose, opening at evening a disk three or four inches across, loaded with richest perfume, and changed to odorless pink before morning; exquisite vetches, with bloom like our sweet pea, and of more than fifty varieties; harebells in great clumps, and castilleias which dot the State with scarlet; rosy cyclamens "on long, lithe stems that soar;" and mertensias, whose delicate bells, blue as a baby's eyes, turn day by day to pink; the cleome, which covers Denver with a purple veil; the whole family of pentstemons, and hundreds of others.
Some little attempt had been made to adorn the rooms which were meant for the ladies. Clean towels had been spread over the pine shelves which did duty for dressing-tables, and on each stood a tumbler stuffed as full as it could hold with purple pentstemons. Clover could not help laughing, yet there was something pathetic to her in the clumsy, man-like arrangement.
At the top of the pass, eleven thousand feet and more above the sea, their colors and their abundance were more profuse and splendid than on the lower levels. There were whole fields of pentstemons, pink, blue, royal purple, or the rare scarlet variety, like stems of asparagus strung with rubies.
There are white pinks of all types, white roses, and wherever crimson rambler is seen Madame Plantier should be his bride; white stocks, hollyhocks, verbenas, zinnias, Japanese anemones, Arabis or rock cress, and white fraxinella; white Lupins, nicotiana, evening primroses, pentstemons, portulaca, primulas, vincas, and even a whitish nasturtium, though its flame-coloured partner salvia declines to have her ardour so modified.