(Multiple Choice, 40 pts)

Read the passage and answer the question.

Nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. Tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the Sierras and coastwise hills. The yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. After its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. But it is not always this way. Before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap, the Indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their own delectation.

In the first sentence of the passage, the author uses the word "unhappy" to describe the growth of the yucca tree. Which word has a similar denotation to "unhappy" but would create a tone of distaste?
A) gloomy
B) melancholy
C) miserable
D) unfortunate