THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 85 



short stemmed and pale but as large as the morning-glories 

 that they resemble. Of a yellowish color, but freely spotted 

 with purple, they bloom late in the season and withstand quite 

 a good deal of freezing so that they are one of the last flowers 

 to be found in the autumn. Only one fern {Cystopteris fra- 

 gilis) occurs up here but it does its little best to drape the damp 

 rocks that harbor it. 



There is no scarlet coloration among the Alpine flowers. 

 Deep and glowing shades of rose, purple, magenta, and bronze 

 abound, but there is no true red. Every other color is 

 abundantly represented. None of the weeds of the lowlands 

 grow in these high altitudes, but wherever the ground is 

 trampled, along the trails and about cabins and stations, certain 

 alpine plants like the cinquefoils and the whitlow-grass spring 

 up, and, thriving as they never do in other situations, soon 

 crowd everything else out. 



Clover, onion, lily, lousewort, stitchwort, sunflower, blue- 

 grass, timothy, daisy, ragwort, gentian, rushes, sedges ; all 

 have their Alpine counterparts. But it must not be supposed 

 that they are the same plants, changed in response to their 

 environment. They are as different in nature as the natives 

 of the arctic lands are different from their prototypes of the 

 Temperate Zones. Because of this difference, because they 

 can endure sudden and extreme changes of temperature, long 

 dry and cold seasons and fierce, continuous winds, and because 

 they can get along on what nourishment their sluggish roots 

 can coax from a reluctant soil, they thrive where any other 

 plants could not live at all. The harebell and the sandwort are 

 just the same above timberline as on the foot-hills. They grow 

 just as high, the leaves are identical in form and size, and the 

 blossoms are just as large. Because Nature has fitted them 

 to live under a great variety of conditions they can grow 

 through a great range of altitude, while most plants are re- 

 stricted to certain levels on account of the climatic differences 

 attendant upon changes of elevation. 



