SWISS FLOWERS. 59 



40. Astrantia major. 



{PLATE XXL) 



This flower (Fig. 40) , well known in old cottage gardens, 

 has nothing brilliant about it, but it is pretty in its quaker- 

 dress, and will furnish, when dry, a much more respectable 

 appearance than some of its more showy neighbours, who 

 will have sadly lost their charms. Its flowers, which are 

 often imperfect, look like a number of stamens, and are in 

 the form of umbels ; but that which gives its character to 

 the plant is a kind of grey involucre that surrounds them, 

 consisting of from fifteen to twenty bracts, prettily tinged 

 with pink and having two or three dark lines running 

 lengthways along them, forming a kind of frill. The plant 

 is from one to one and a half feet high;* the lower 

 leaves are palmate, generally with five divisions. Moun- 

 tain-pastures, and abundant near rivers in the plain. 



A. minor is a much smaller and more graceful plant. 

 Its palmate root-leaves, on long stalks, have seven divisions. 

 The involucre is white, as is also the rest of the flower, 

 except the anthers of the many stamens. Alpine heights 

 and valleys. 



* The illustration gives only u small section of the plant. 



