A STUDY IN CONTRAST

If you were to visit Paradise Valley at this time of the year and could see the entire region held fast in winter's icy grip -- with all the buildings snowed under or with but a portion of their roofs exposed -- you would wonder if any kind of flower could ever bloom here. And yet if you saw the same place at the height of the summer season when the hills everywhere are carpeted with a mass of varied flowers whose brilliance embraces every shade in the rainbow, we could not blame you a particle if you scoffed at the stories that you would hear relative to the enormous amount of snow which is customary here. These high parks about "The Mountain" are certainly studies in contrast!

With the melting of the snow comes the Avalanche Lily or Dogtooth Violet whose legions advance on the heels of the receeding snowbanks -- oftentimes pushing their way through the snow itself. It's beauty is rivaled in the high parks at that early season by the Western Anemone whose large buttercup-like flowers fall apart in a short time to give way to the development of unique seed pods, that resemble an old fashioned feather duster, in the fall. In the dense timber of the lower slopes we find the fragrant Twinflower, a member of the Honeysuckle family, the Canadian Dogwood and the Trillium which is the earliest of our flowers in the Park and which is, even now, in bloom here and there.

There are approximately 750 species of flowering plants native to this Park, embracing all manner of habitat. We find the Oregon Grape, Salal and Pacnystima among the vegetation of the moist, shaded forest floor at the lower elevations; Skunk Cabbage, Shooting Star and the Red and Yellow Mimulus grows in marshy or very moist places while the barren cliffs are brightened by the Pentstemon which seems to find ample nourishment in some crevice. And of course the Indian Paint Brush, Lupine and various members of the Aster family brighten the meadows. There is heather too -- three species, the red, the white and the yellow being most common. But the number of species is not the remarkable thing about our flower fields -- it is the spontaneity of bloom that arouses interest. The variety of flowers that would ordinarily occupy a blooming period of several months literally burst into flower under the influence of warm July sunshine and the ample moisture of receeding snowbanks. And so the variety of color and species as well as their great number is concentrated in the rather short period between the disappearance of the snow in mid summer to the return of King Boreas to the region in the early fall.

When are the flower fields at their best? Ordinarily the last week or ten days of July and the first week or ten days in August.

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