74 SWISS FLOWERS. 



55. Phyteuma. 



(PLATE XXXI.) 



This family, which is scarcely represented in England, is 

 found in Switzerland in great variety. It is divided into 

 the plants which have the flowers in a roundish head, and 

 those which have them in a spike. They are all of some 

 shade of blue, except P. spicatum, which is more generally 

 white. They may be easily recognised from having the 

 buds of the flowers in the form of a tube bent and closed 

 at the end. These open into five long segments, contain- 

 ing five stamens and a pistil cleft into two or three stigmas. 

 Many of the species are very rare, but P. Halleri, about two 

 or three feet high, with a spike of blue flowers, is found 

 everywhere in the lower mountain-pastures, among the 

 multitude of flowers that adorn them in the short time 

 before they are visited by the mower's scythe. 



P. humile (Fig. 55) is a little plant barely three inches 

 high, with a rather large head, of from eight to ten flowers, 

 amid the lance-shaped bracts which equal them in length. 

 When the bent, sealed, buds of the corolla at length burst, 

 they disclose the long protruding pistil, deeply three-cleft 

 at the summit. The leaves are verv narrow, an inch or two 



