398 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH 



everywhere some of the hardier flowers or grasses ap- 

 pear, sometimes dwarfed, it is true, but vigorous, for 

 all that. 



Within the limits of Northwest Greenland — that is, 

 between the great glaciers of Melville Bay on the south 

 and the Humboldt Glacier on the north — I collected 

 over one hundred and twenty-five species of vascular 

 plants. A number of these had before been recorded 

 from this area, and one had not before been found in 

 Greenland. This last, Androsace septentrionalis, a deli- 

 cate, inconspicuous little flower, I found growing on a 

 gravel slope within a hundred yards of Borup Lodge. 

 The mushrooms are not numerous, but the lichens are 

 legion. 



The forests of that far Northland do not appreciably 

 obstruct the view, nor does the shrubbery afford much 

 cover. The biggest trees do not rise more than three 

 inches above the rocks on which they grow, even though 

 their branches may spread over a square yard of sur- 

 face, and the biggest shrub grows hardly so large as a 

 croquet ball. The commoner trees are the Arctic willow 

 (Salix arctica), the little two- or three-leaved willow 

 (Salix herbacea), and the tiny dwarf birch (Beiula nana). 

 In fact, there are no others. Some of the Arctic willow, 

 though over fifty years old, have a stem no thicker than 

 my little finger. Salix herbacea is tiny indeed, rarelv 

 more than a half -inch high. 



Of shrubs the most interesting is the Lapland rhodo- 

 dendron {Rhododendron lapponicun). On a few shel- 

 tered slopes, where the sun shines warm and the snow 

 does not lie too long, this little bush blooms profusely, 

 its tiny twigs set with numerous little rose-purple blos- 

 soms scarcely a quarter of an inch wide. Two species 



