Alpine Phlox
Phlox Douglasii, Hook. Phlox or Polemonium Family
Plants forming cushion-like tufts; three or four inches high. Leaves.—Needle-like; six lines or less long; with shorter ones crowded in the axils. Flowers.—Pink, lilac, or white; sessile; terminating the branchlets. Calyx.—Five-cleft. Corolla.—Salver-form; with five-lobed border. Stamens.—Five; on the tube of the corolla. Ovary.—Three-celled. Style three-lobed. Hab.—The Sierras, from Mariposa County northward and eastward.
This delightful little flower may be found in the Sierras at an altitude of from five to ten thousand feet. It loves the open sunshine of the cool mountain heights, and with its cushiony tufts clothes many a bit of granite soil with beauty. It seems undaunted by its stern surroundings, and lifts its innocent eyes confidingly to the skies which bend gently over it—those skies
“So fathomless and pure, as if
All loveliest azure things have gone
To heaven that way—the flowers, the sea,—
And left their color there alone.”