SWISS FLOWERS. 87 



tians ; or tube-shaped, opening into a spreading limb, with 

 five divisions, sometimes only four, and often five additional 

 smaller lobes between the larger. The germen is usually 

 very long, with scarcely any, or no, style ; the divided stigma 

 remains on it after the flower has faded. Stamens five, 

 rarely four, not appearing above the tube of the corolla. 

 Leaves alternate. 



We have, first, the yellow, or yellow and dull-purple, 

 Gentians, with their tubular flowers growing in whorls, very 

 unlike most of the blue ; they are coarse, not at all pretty, 

 plants, growing from one to four feet high, and remarkable 

 for the three to five-ribbed veins in their large, vigorous, 

 somewhat oval, smooth, and pointed, leaves. It is these — 

 and especially G. lutea, which must be called a handsome 

 plant in spite of what has been said, with its whorled 

 flowers and pleasant odour — that furnish the well-known 

 Gentian-root, so valuable for its bitter, tonic, properties. 

 In the mountain chalets, especially at Saleve, they make of 

 it a kind of Gentian-brandy, very strong, but whose great 

 bitterness happily checks the use of it. There is a plant 

 very common on waste rocky places, whose large and 

 strongly-ribbed leaves may be easily mistaken for one of the 

 large Gentians when it is out of bloom. Its green dioecious 

 flower soon shows the difl'erence. This is Veratrura album. 



G. asclepiadea is of a beautiful blue colour, with an 

 erect leafy stem a foot or two high, bearing many flowers 



