Flower Plants
Flower Plants
THE SNOW PLANTS OF CALIFORNIA *** by Brad Smith Last summer my frien Pat, my brother Eric, and I went hiking above Yosemite Valley, where we discovered snow plants. We had never seen them before, and their curious color and shape fascinated us. By the time we left the mountains, we had a lot of photographs and a lot of curiosity. Back in Los Angeles, the UCLA Library satisfied much of our curiosity, largely replacing it with wonder. If you are in the right place at the right time, you can't miss the snow plants. They are incredibly bright red little shoots that pop up all over the forest floor in the spring, especiallly where the humus is thick. Their scientific name, Sarcodes sanguinea--"bloody flesh--is grotesquely appropriate. Snow plants range from the mountains of Southern California to the Cascades in Oregon. They seem to prefer the darkest woods--the same sort of places the bears like--in the snow forests: the (Page ONE of SEVEN)