The Flora of the Alps. 
By PRoFEessorR ALFRED W. BENNETT, M.A., B.Sc., V.P.R.MS. 
EVEN to those tourists who claim no botanical knowledge, the pleasure 
of a visit to Switzerland is greatly increased by the extraordinary 
beauty and variety of its flora. Even in the lowland valleys and on 
the spurs of the foot-hills, the wild plants, if not more: varied and more 
beautiful than our own, present many novelties, at least to the dwellers 
in our southern counties. In the early spring the meadows are gay 
with the globe-flower and the bird’s-eye primrose ; later on the monks- 
hoods, yellow and blue, the hellebores, the anemones, the phyteumas, 
the pinks, the gentians, the yellow foxgloves, have the charm of 
novelty ; and the keenest delight is experienced when the blue bells of 
the Soldanella are first seen peering through the snow, or the Edelweiss 
is first gathered in its rocky home. It is only the experienced botanist 
who realises that, as a compensation, some of our most beautiful wild 
flowers are absent from the flora of Switzerland. We can well under- 
stand the rapture with which the great Swedish botanist Linnaeus is 
said to have gazed for the first time on a gorse-common in full 
bloom; for the gorse is not abundant in Central or Northern Europe. 
Our bell-heathers hardly go east of the Rhine, and may be said to 
be replaced on the Swiss mountains by the “alpine roses” or rhodo- 
dendrons. The wood-hyacinth and the purple foxglove are not found 
in Switzerland. 
The distribution of the alpine flora in Switzerland is very unequal. 
The calcareous Jura has a subalpine flora of its own. The flora of 
Mont Blanc and of the Alps of Savoy is a very poor one. That of 
the Bernese Oberland is somewhat richer. But the great wealth of the 
alpine flora is south of the Rhone valley; and especially in those 
mountain spurs and alpine valleys which stretch into the territory 
which is geographically and linguistically, though not politically, Italian. 
The Rhone valley itself exhibits a remarkable commingling of different 
floras. Here I have gathered, almost side by side, the subalpine holly- 
fern (Polystichum lonchitis) and the gigantic horsetail (Hguwisetwm 
ramosissimum) representative of the Mediterranean flora. 
With regard to the special characteristics of the flora of the Alps, 
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