RANUNCULUS. 



and in the garden that eye should be kept firmly shut to any sugges- 

 tion of merit in the fat -packed little double-flowered form called 

 Bachelor's Buttons, which sometimes dares to appear in lists even to 

 the exclusion of that noble fairy, the type, with which it is not worthy 

 to share a catalogue, to say nothing of a garden. 



R. adoneus is a very high-alpine from beside the snow-fields of 

 Colorado, quite dwarf in growth, with claw-cleft leaves, and large 

 golden -yellow flowers. For the gritty, underground-watered moraine. 



R. alpester, L., is perhaps the most lovable of all the alpine group, 

 and one of the few treasures that are at their best and happiest in 

 Switzerland. It is hardly possible to tread the high, stony places of 

 all the main chains (especially on the limestone) towards the upper 

 shingles beside the water-courses trickling from the snow, without 

 having your recognition clamoured for by clustered clumps of stalwart 

 and shining pure-white buttercups with a golden eye, standing so 

 sturdily up on their stems of 2 or 3 inches from those hearty tuffets of 

 intensely dark-green leaves, three-lobed or nve-lobed, and then usually 

 cut deeply again in ample or pointed scallops, and all veinous with 

 yet darker nerves. The type, however, varies greatly, and some 

 forms are as ample as other local developments are poor. In the 

 Oberland (as, for instance, above the Gemmi, and about Rosenlaui) 

 it is specially notable ; in the far Alps of Styria, on the limestones of 

 the Sehneeberg as on the granite above Heiligenblut, it is rather less 

 full-fed in outline of lovely snow-saucer, and has much less inclination 

 to swell into big clustered clumps with as many as twenty blossoms 

 all out at once. And its chief dereliction is in the Graians, where it 

 occurs very rarely, and not at all about the Mont Cenis. In the 

 Maritime Alps it is not at all to be seen either, but as soon as you have 

 crossed the Col de Tcnda, from the Rocca del Abisso on to limestone 

 Marguareis of the Ligurian Apennines just opposite, the plant is once 

 more in possession of the white stony places. In the garden it loves 

 almost any deep, rich, moist soil, but is especially happy in the moraine 

 close by running water, where it forms widening tufts from year to 

 year, and never wholly ceases to blossom from March to the end of 

 November. Division. 



R. amplexicaulis is only known in the alpine pastures of the 

 Pyrenees, Asturias, and Estremadura. It is a most hearty and well- 

 known dweller in rich places of the garden, much larger and less choice 

 than the last, with tall stems of a foot or so, branching, and embraced 

 by ample pointed-oval leaves of glaucous blue-grey that contrast 

 admirably with the very big and full-petalled blooms of pure and 

 pearly whiteness in early summer. 



207 



