A dry spot a little
way back from the margin of a silver fir lily-garden makes a glorious
camp-ground, especially where the slope is toward the east with a view
of the distant peaks along the summit of the Range. The tall lilies are
brought forward most impressively like visitors by the light of your
camp-fire and the nearest of the trees with their whorled branches tower
above you like larger lilies and the sky seen through the garden-opening
seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.

The Two-Leaved Pine

The Two-Leaved Pine (Pinus contorta, var. Murrayana), above the Silver
Fir zone, forms the bulk of the alpine forests up to a height of from
8000 to 9500 feet above the sea, growing in beautiful order on moraines
scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the
giants of the lower regions this is a small tree, seldom exceeding a
height of eighty or ninety feet. The largest I ever measured was ninety
feet high and a little over six feet in diameter. The average height of
mature trees throughout the entire belt is probably not far from fifty
or sixty feet with a diameter of two feet. It is a well-proportioned,
rather handsome tree with grayish-brown bark and crooked, much-divided
branches which cover the greater part of the trunk, but not so densely
as to prevent it being seen. The lower limbs, like those of most other
conifers that grow in snowy regions, curve downward, gradually take a
horizontal position about half-way up the trunk, then aspire more and
more toward the summit. The short, rigid needles in fascicles of two are
arranged in comparatively long cylindrical tassels at the ends of the
tough up-curving branches. The cones are about two inches long, growing
in clusters among the needles without any striking effect except while
very young, when the flowers are of a vivid crimson color and the whole
tree appears to be dotted with brilliant flowers. The staminate flowers
are still more showy on account of their great abundance, often giving a
reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of foliage and filling the air
with pollen. No other pine on the Range is so regularly planted as this
one, covering moraines that extend along the sides of the high rocky
valleys for miles without interruption. The thin bark is streaked and
sprinkled with resin as though it had been showered upon the forest like
rain.

Therefore this tree more than any other is subject to destruction by
fire. During strong