Flower Plants
Flower Plants
THE SNOW PLANTS OF CALIFORNIA (cont.)yellow pine, red fir, and lodgepole pine belts, at altitudes from 4,000 to 8,000 feet. They like to live with the sequois and firs that grow in these forests, and after you find them growing near snowbanks. At one time snow plants were believed to be parasites, attaching themselves to and drawing nourishment from roots of trees. But they are not parasites living on live plants: they are saprophytes, living on dead or decaying organic matter. Thus they utilize the energy remaining in the rotting litter of the forest and do not obtain it directly from sunlight as most plants do. Therefore, they don't need chlorophyll to manufacture food from sunlight, which is why they are not green. The red color of snow plants may be a relic of a time when they did use the little sun that filters in deep shade are red. A red surface absorbs green light, which is all that gets through to the bottom of the jungle or a dense(Page TWO of SEVEN)