Lilies are rare in Utah; so also are their companions the ferns and
orchids, chiefly on account of the fiery saltness of the soil and
climate. You may walk the deserts of the Great Basin in the bloom time
of the year, all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the snowy
Wahsatch, and your eyes will be filled with many a gay malva, and
poppy, and abronia, and cactus, but you may not see a single true lily,
and only a very few liliaceous plants of any kind. Not even in the
cool, fresh glens of the mountains will you find these favorite
flowers, though some of these desert ranges almost rival the Sierra in
height. Nevertheless, in the building and planting of this grand
Territory the lilies were not forgotten. Far back in the dim geologic
ages, when the sediments of the old seas were being gathered and
outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of a book, and when these
sediments became dry land, and were baked and crumbled into the sky as
mountain ranges; when the lava-floods of the Fire Period were being
lavishly poured forth from innumerable rifts and craters; when the ice
of the Glacial Period was laid like a mantle over every mountain and
valley—throughout all these immensely protracted periods, in the throng
of these majestic operations, Nature kept her flower children in mind.
She considered the lilies, and, while planting the plains with sage and
the hills with cedar, she has covered at least one mountain with golden
erythroniums and fritillarias as its crowning glory, as if willing to
show what she could do in the lily line even here.
Looking southward from the south end of Salt Lake, the two northmost
peaks of the Oquirrh Range are seen swelling calmly into the cool sky
without any marked character, excepting only their snow crowns, and a
few weedy-looking patches of spruce and fir, the simplicity of their
slopes preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated. Gray,
sagey plains circle around their bases, and up to a height of a
thousand feet or more their sides are tinged with purple, which I
afterwards found is produced by a close growth of dwarf oak just coming
into leaf. Higher you may detect faint tintings of green on a gray
ground, from young grasses and sedges; then come the dark pine woods
filling glacial hollows, and over all the smooth crown of snow.
While standing at their feet, the other day, shortly after my memorable
excursion among the salt waves of the lake, I said: “Now I shall have
another baptism. I will bathe in the high sky, among cool wind-waves
from the snow.” From the more southerly of the two peaks a long ridge
comes down, bent like a bow, one end in the hot plains, the other in
the snow of the summit. After carefully scanning the jagged towers and
battlements with which it is roughened, I determined to make it my way,
though it presented but a feeble advertisement of its floral wealth.
This apparent barrenness, however, made no great objection just then,
for I was scarce hoping for flowers, old or new, or even for fine
scenery. I wanted in particular to learn what the Oquirrh rocks were
made of, what trees composed the curious patches of forest; and,
perhaps more than all, I was animated by a mountaineer’s eagerness to
get my feet into the snow once more, and my head into the clear sky,
after lying dormant all winter at the level of the sea.
But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. I
had not gone more than a mile from Lake Point ere I found the way
profusely decked with flowers, mostly compositae and purple
leguminosae, a hundred corollas or more to the square yard, with a
corresponding abundance of winged blossoms above them, moths and
butterflies, the leguminosae of the insect kingdom. This floweriness is
maintained with delightful variety all the way up through rocks and
bushes to the snow—violets, lilies, gilias, oenotheras, wallflowers,
ivesias, saxifrages, smilax, and miles of blooming bushes, chiefly
azalea, honeysuckle, brier rose, buckthorn, and eriogonum, all meeting
and blending in divine accord.
Two liliaceous plants in particular, _Erythronium grandiflorum_ and
_Fritillaria pudica_, are marvelously beautiful and abundant. Never
before, in all my walks, have I met so glorious a throng of these fine
showy liliaceous plants. The whole mountainside was aglow with them,
from a height of fifty-five hundred feet to the very edge of the snow.
Although remarkably fragile, both in form and in substance, they are
endowed with plenty of deep-seated vitality, enabling them to grow in
all kinds of places—down in leafy glens, in the lee of wind-beaten
ledges, and beneath the brushy tangles of azalea, and oak, and prickly
roses—everywhere forming the crowning glory of the flowers. If the
neighboring mountains are as rich in lilies, then this may well be
called the Lily Range.
After climbing about a thousand feet above the plain I came to a
picturesque mass of rock, cropping up through the underbrush on one of
the steepest slopes of the mountain. After examining some tufts of
grass and saxifrage that were growing in its fissured surface, I was
going to pass it by on the upper side, where the bushes were more open,
but a company composed of the two lilies I have mentioned were blooming
on the lower side, and though they were as yet out of sight, I suddenly
changed my mind and went down to meet them, as if attracted by the
ringing of their bells. They were growing in a small, nestlike opening
between the rock and the bushes, and both the erythronium and the
fritillaria were in full flower. These were the first of the species I
had seen, and I need not try to tell the joy they made. They are both
lowly plants,—lowly as violets,—the tallest seldom exceeding six inches
in height, so that the most searching winds that sweep the mountains
scarce reach low enough to shake their bells.
The fritillaria has five or six linear, obtuse leaves, put on
irregularly near the bottom of the stem, which is usually terminated by
one large bell-shaped flower; but its more beautiful companion, the
erythronium, has two radical leaves only, which are large and oval, and
shine like glass. They extend horizontally in opposite directions, and
form a beautiful glossy ground, over which the one large down-looking
flower is swung from a simple stem, the petals being strongly recurved,
like those of _Lilium superbum_. Occasionally a specimen is met which
has from two to five flowers hung in a loose panicle. People oftentimes
travel far to see curious plants like the carnivorous darlingtonia, the
fly-catcher, the walking fern, etc. I hardly know how the little bells
I have been describing would be regarded by seekers of this class, but
every true flower-lover who comes to consider these Utah lilies will
surely be well rewarded, however long the way.
Pushing on up the rugged slopes, I found many delightful
seclusions—moist nooks at the foot of cliffs, and lilies in every one
of them, not growing close together like daisies, but well apart, with
plenty of room for their bells to swing free and ring. I found hundreds
of them in full bloom within two feet of the snow. In winter only the
bulbs are alive, sleeping deep beneath the ground, like field mice in
their nests; then the snow-flowers fall above them, lilies over lilies,
until the spring winds blow, and these winter lilies wither in turn;
then the hiding erythroniums and fritillarias rise again, responsive to
the first touches of the sun.
I noticed the tracks of deer in many places among the lily gardens, and
at the height of about seven thousand feet I came upon the fresh trail
of a flock of wild sheep, showing that these fine mountaineers still
flourish here above the range of Mormon rifles. In the planting of her
wild gardens, Nature takes the feet and teeth of her flocks into
account, and makes use of them to trim and cultivate, and keep them in
order, as the bark and buds of the tree are tended by woodpeckers and
linnets.
The evergreen woods consist, as far as I observed, of two species, a
spruce and a fir, standing close together, erect and arrowy in a
thrifty, compact growth; but they are quite small, say from six to
twelve or fourteen inches in diameter, and bout forty feet in height.
Among their giant relatives of the Sierra the very largest would seem
mere saplings. A considerable portion of the south side of the mountain
is planted with a species of aspen, called “quaking asp” by the
wood-choppers. It seems to be quite abundant on many of the eastern
mountains of the basin, and forms a marked feature of their upper
forests.
Wading up the curves of the summit was rather toilsome, for the snow,
which was softened by the blazing sun, was from ten to twenty feet
deep, but the view was one of the most impressively sublime I ever
beheld. Snowy, ice-sculptured ranges bounded the horizon all around,
while the great lake, eighty miles long and fifty miles wide, lay fully
revealed beneath a lily sky. The shorelines, marked by a ribbon of
white sand, were seen sweeping around many a bay and promontory in
elegant curves, and picturesque islands rising to mountain heights, and
some of them capped with pearly cumuli. And the wide prairie of water
glowing in the gold and purple of evening presented all the colors that
tint the lips of shells and the petals of lilies—the most beautiful
lake this side of the Rocky Mountains. Utah Lake, lying thirty-five
miles to the south, was in full sight also, and the river Jordan, which
links the two together, may be traced in silvery gleams throughout its
whole course.
Descending the mountain, I followed the windings of the main central
glen on the north, gathering specimens of the cones and sprays of the
evergreens, and most of the other new plants I had met; but the lilies
formed the crowning glory of my bouquet—the grandest I had carried in
many a day. I reached the hotel on the lake about dusk with all my
fresh riches, and my first mountain ramble in Utah was accomplished. On
my way back to the city, the next day, I met a grave old Mormon with
whom I had previously held some Latter-Day discussions. I shook my big
handful of lilies in his face and shouted, “Here are the true saints,
ancient and Latter-Day, enduring forever!” After he had recovered from
his astonishment he said, “They are nice.”
The other liliaceous plants I have met in Utah are two species of
zigadenas, _Fritillaria atropurpurea, Calochortus Nuttallii_, and three
or four handsome alliums. One of these lilies, the calochortus, several
species of which are well known in California as the “Mariposa tulips,”
has received great consideration at the hands of the Mormons, for to it
hundreds of them owe their lives. During the famine years between 1853
and 1858, great destitution prevailed, especially in the southern
settlements, on account of drouth and grasshoppers, and throughout one
hungry winter in particular, thousands of the people subsisted chiefly
on the bulbs of the tulips, called “sego” by the Indians, who taught
them its use.
[Illustration: SEGO LILIES
(_Calochortus Nuttallii_)]
Liliaceous women and girls are rare among the Mormons. They have seen
too much hard, repressive toil to admit of the development of lily
beauty either in form or color. In general they are thickset, with
large feet and hands, and with sun-browned faces, often curiously
freckled like the petals of _Fritillaria atropurpurea_. They are fruit
rather than flower—good brown bread. But down in the San Pitch Valley
at Gunnison, I discovered a genuine lily, happily named Lily Young. She
is a granddaughter of Brigham Young, slender and graceful, with
lily-white cheeks tinted with clear rose, She was brought up in the old
Salt Lake Zion House, but by some strange chance has been transplanted
to this wilderness, where she blooms alone, the “Lily of San Pitch.”
Pitch is an old Indian, who, I suppose, pitched into the settlers and
thus acquired fame enough to give name to the valley. Here I feel
uneasy about the name of this lily, for the compositors have a perverse
trick of making me say all kinds of absurd things wholly unwarranted by
plain copy, and I fear that the “Lily of San Pitch” will appear in
print as the widow of Sam Patch. But, however this may be, among my
memories of this strange land, that Oquirrh mountain, with its golden
lilies, will ever rise in clear relief, and associated with them will
always be the Mormon lily of San Pitch.