The Flora of the Alps. 



By Professor Alfred W. Bennett, M.A., B.Sc, V.P.RM.S. 



Even to those tourists who claim no botanical knowledge, the pleasure 

 of a visit to Switzerland is greatly increased by the extraordinary 

 beauty and variety of its flora. Even in the lowland valleys and on 

 the spurs of the foot-hills, the wild plants, if not more varied and more 

 beautiful than our own, present many novelties, at least to the dwellers 

 in our southern counties. In the early spring the meadows are gay 

 with the globe-flower and the bird's-eye primrose ; later on the monks- 

 hoods, yellow and blue, the hellebores, the anemones, the phyteumas, 

 the pinks, the gentians, the yellow foxgloves, have the charm of 

 novelty ; and the keenest delight is experienced when the blue bells of 

 the Soldanella are first seen peering through the snow, or the Edelweiss 

 is first gathered in its rocky home. It is only the experienced botanist 

 who realises that, as a compensation, some of our most beautiful wild 

 flowers are absent from the flora of Switzerland. We can well under- 

 stand the rapture with which the great Swedish botanist Linnaeus is 

 said to have gazed for the first time on a gorse- common in full 

 bloom ; for the gorse is not abundant in Central or Northern Europe. 

 Our bell-heathers hardly go east of the Bhine, and may be said to 

 be replaced on the Swiss mountains by the " alpine roses " or rhodo- 

 dendrons. The wood-hyacinth and the purple foxglove are not found 

 in Switzerland. 



The distribution of the alpine flora in Switzerland is very unequal. 

 The calcareous Jura has a subalpine flora of its own. The flora of 

 Mont Blanc and of the Alps of Savoy is a very poor one. That of 

 the Bernese Oberland is somewhat richer. But the great wealth of the 

 alpine flora is south of the Rhone valley ; and especially in those 

 mountain spurs and alpine valleys which stretch into the territory 

 which is geographically and linguistically, though not politically, Italian. 

 The Rhone valley itself exhibits a remarkable commingling of different 

 floras. Here I have gathered, almost side by side, the subalpine holly- 

 fern (Polystidmm lonchitis) and the gigantic horsetail (Equisetum 

 ramosissimum) representative of the Mediterranean flora. 



With regard to the special characteristics of the flora of the Alps, 



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