Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: graceful, busby tree that the name Green Mesa is due. The pifion is scattered here and there, sometimes covering cjuUe au area, especially -where the sandstone does not reach the surface. Very rarely, upon a rocky ledge, is seen a solitary tree of Juniperus Virginiuna. The trails over the Mesa Verde, some of them evidently very old, generally cross the small parks and follow up openings in the juniper-forest. The sage- bush (Artemisia tridentata) covers these parks so thickly that they are almost impassable excepting by the narrow trail, so narrow that as we ride along the encroaching Artemisia is continually brushing against us. The yellow flowers of Helianthus petiolaris and lenticularis, of Actinella Torreyana and Richardsonii, the delicate pink blossoms of Hamillaria vivipara, the light blue of Pentstemon linaroides, and the hooked spines of EcMnocactus WMpplei sometimes are seen; but, after having crossed the Mesa Verde, one has the impression that its vegetation is all juniper and sage-brush. There is a great difference between the vegetation of the northern slope and canons (altitude 8,000 feet) and that of the southern edge (altitude 6,000 feet), due mainly to the lower altitude and smaller rain-fall of the southern portion. The northern portion is covered with a luxuriant growth of Peraphyllum, Fendlera, Purshia tridentata, Cercocarpusparvifolius, Amelanchier alnifolia, Quercus, and Yuccabaccata, while the southern portion has only a growth of Purshia, Coicania, Uphedra, and Fraxintis anomala. The valley of the San Juan really comprises the whole extent of country of the southwest explorations; but as the term is applied to the habitat of plants of the collection, it is limited to a district north of the river about twenty miles wide. The San Juan River was followed f...