In the Rocky Mountains, the mountain zone occupies the slopes of middle elevations and includes all the taller, richer forests.

Pine, spruce, and fir trees are most plentiful, and their shade is often so dense that only a few shade-loving flowers are able to grow in the deep woods.

Many open spaces, however, are found along the streams, or in the flat-floored valleys where natural mountain parks are developed and where grass land and forest mingle.

On account of the good water supply furnished by the more abundant rains and snowfalls, the plants are taller and are more closely massed than in the plains of the United States, or the foothills. In these mountain parks, are found natural flower gardens affording a display unsurpassed by any country in the world. Here indeed do:

"A thousand doors rise, Breathed up from blossoms of a thousand dyes." -- William Cullen Bryant

While the variety is too great, and the number too large, for me to describe them all, some of the most abundant and most beautiful must be mentioned. These are some that I once found while traveling in the American Rocky Mountains.

 Mountain Daisies Which Carpet the Meadows

While the daisies of the lowlands sprinkle the meadoes with silver and gold, those of the mountains add to the white and yellow colors hades of purple and blue, that given even greater beauty to mountain meadows.

Varying almost as much in size as in color, the Mountain Daisies (Erigeron) are from one to three inches across their heads, and from eight inches to two feet in e\height.

They reach their best development in the open mountain parks at altitudes of between six thousand and nine thousand feet, but do not stop there.

On to the very top they go, and some of the alpine meadows are carpeted thickly with daisies that are only two or three inches high, but with flowers an inch across.

Other names for these flowers are:

• Daisy Fleabane
• Fleabane
• Black Woolly Fleabane

The last one, the Black Wooly Fleabane, has the stem covered with purplish black hairs, and fifty or sixty white rays surround the yellow disk.

In case you are wondering about the whole "fleabane" part of this type of daisy name -- it stems from the belief that the plants, once dried, repelled fleas.

The daisies reach their climax in the Giant Daisy (Wyethia), so abundant in the Yellowstone National Park and adjacent areas. It comes early in the summer with huge blossoms, four inches across, at the top of almost unbranched stems a foot and a half tall. The yellow disk is surrounded by broad white or cream-colored rays notched at the ends. Their size and habit of growth make Sunflower Daisy a very appropriate name.

The Daisy-aster (Townsendia) is the smaller plant, with almost as large flowers, and is found on the drier hillsides.

The leaves are small, and the stems are unbranched and seldom more than six inches high, but they support flowers three inches in diameter, and yellow disks surrounded by bright blue or purple rays.

The Mountain Asters are closely related to the daisies, differing form them chiefly by being produced on more branching plants by being smaller in size.

They also having more highly colored rays. They come later in the season, beginning in late summer and continuing until frost comes. During the season:

"Everywhere the purple asters nod,

And bend, and wave, and flit."

-- Helen Hunt

The Mariposa Lily (Calochortus) is one of the showiest flowers of the mountains. It is found from Canada to Arizona, reaching its best development midway between, and extending its range far to the west.

The broad cups, held erect on slender stems, are formed of three broad petals within three narrow green sepals.

The plants vary in size, but are usually over a food high, and the flowers are often two inches across.

In color, too, there is a wide range. One of the most plentiful and most beautiful has petals white, or tinged with lilac and streaked with purple, a distinctly purple band appearing above the yellow base.

It's scientific name is Calochortus Gunnisonil, the first word meaning "beautiful plant" and the latter being given in honor of Captain Gunnison, who discoverd it surveying a route for the Pacific Railway in 1853.

A variety with yellow petals spotted with purple is know as the Sego Lily and is the state flower of Utah. Like its relatives, the Sego Lily is perennial from a bulb, and this bulb is used for food by the Ute tribe and other Indian tribes of Utah.

In the moist mountain meadows, along with daisies, lilies, and other large flowers, the small white blossoms of the Wild Heliotrope (Valeriana) add no small part to the beauty of the landscape.

Here the white corollas are funnel-shaped, and not more than one-eigth inch across, with three projecting stamens and five small pointed lobes often tinged with mauve or yellow.

The display is accomplished by grouping the tiny sweet-scented flowers into flat-topped clusters, a couple of inches across.

The branches from below raise other clusters to surround the central one. The thick juicy stalks are from ten to twenty inches high, and bear large opposite glossy leaves, each with from three to seven lobes.

The tall Larkspur (Delphinium) is one of the most stately flowers of the moist mountain meadows. The spike-like racemes reach a height of from three to five feet, with flowers that are usually "blue as the heavens they gaze at."

Some varieties have white or purple flowers, and there are some not more than a foot high.  All have the finely dissected palmate leaves, so common in the Buttercup plant family, to which the larkspurs belong.

Both the sepals and petals are colored, and one of the former is extended backward into a long spur that gives its name to the flower.  The scientific name (Delphinium) means "dolphin," and is given on account of the fancied resemblance of the flower to that creature of the sea.

Although so beautiful that many varieties are cultivated in gardens, the larkspur has a bad reputation among farmers and cowboys, for it is very poisonous to sheep and cattle.  This property has given the plant some common names as:

• Stagger Weed
• Poison Weed
• Cow Poison

Growing alongside the larkspur, closely realated, and of similar habit, the blue flowers of the Monkshood (Aconitum) have, inspead of a spur, a helmet-shaped cap developed from one of its blue sepals.

Its resemblance to a monk's cowl gives it the common name. 

Blue and pink varieties are often to be found, all on spikes reaching a height of from two to four feet.

With their mocking faces, the Monkey Flowers (Mimulus) are the floral court jesters. Closely related to the garden snapdragon, the flowers have a similar structure.

Each has a long green calyx tube from which comes a bright-colored tubular corolla that spreads open into two lips, the upper turned backward, and the lower spreading into three lobes, forming a fanciful monkey's face.

Two kinds are likely to be found in damp spots. One named for the explorer Meriwether Lewis (Mimulus Lewisii) is a foot or more high, freely branching with opposite lancelote leaves covered with a viscid pubescence.

It's flowers are rose-red or purplish, with tubes a full inch long and a laughing face that shoots out its ripe red lips at the passing traveler.

In similar, or in more shaded places, on somewhat smaller plants, are the yellow blossoms of the Yellow Monkey Flower, which shows its kin to its larger relative, by the dark red spots on its yellow throat.

It grows shorter and shorter as the mountain is climbed, until near the top, we may find but one inch-long flowers on a plant only two inches high.

All of the Monkey Flowers have a peculiar sweet odor, which is so strongly developed in one found in Colorado and Wyoming, that it has the common name Musk Plant and has made its way into gardens and greenhouses.