ANEMONE. 
A. alpina is the Great King of Glory in the race, as none will ever 
deny who has seen him at his best, for instance, on the Mont Cenis at 
the alpine levels, covering all the farthest hills with blobs of snow, as 
up come the huge ferny masses of foliage, and the royal snowy flowers 
on their 2-foot stems; while where the snows have but recently de- 
parted, there, from the dank brown earth, danced over with the 
fringy little violet bells of Soldanella and pierced by the long fluted 
opalescent chalices of Crocus albiflorus, sit close to the ground those 
tight clumps of bronzy, pearly globes, just beginning to unfold their 
golden tassels to the daylight, not by any means to be foretold for the 
stalwart splendours that they will ultimately become, as the stems 
develop and slowly the leaves unfold ; only to attain their maximum 
of wide-spread majesty when the blossoms are gone, and have given 
place in due time to wildly whirling striiwelpeter balls of twisting 
silver-fluffy seeds, hardly léss beautiful in their way than the 
flowers whose radiant youth is thus worthily represented by reverend 
age. The plant is one that loves the upper alpine fields, where 
it grows in long lush grass.and makes it unfit for hay ; but it does not 
climb to the highest alpine lawns where A. vernalis principally reigns, 
and it dies before the onslaughts of culture and manure. This species 
is purely Eurasiatic, but is replaced in the Rockies by A. occidentalis, 
while A. alpina occupies almost all the alpine chains of the Old World, 
and develops into many different forms, some of which have received 
separate names, and few of which attain the splendour of the Graian 
grandeur. The most interesting and famous of these varieties is the 
sulphur one which is known to gardens and cataloguesas A. sulfurea. 
This plant possesses the public imagination almost exclusively, because 
it possesses the Swiss Alps almost to the exclusion of the type, which, 
there indeed, is often small and poor (though fine forms have come 
from seed gathered high above Rosenlaui). A.a. sulfurea at its best is 
certainly most magnificent, though never quite attaining the dimensions 
of the best Alpinas; in the Engadine it is specially fine, as on the 
passes going over to Chamonix. It has been said that this form 
belongs to the granite, while the type adheres to the limestone. In 
gardens the distinction is valueless, and in nature quite untrustworthy, 
though acceptable as a very rough general proposition. For, in the 
granites, for instance, of the Madonna della Finestra above Saint Martin 
Vésubie, the alpine Anemone is an ample and splendid form of pure A. 
alpina (in similar or more rocky conditions at the head of the Boréon 
in the next valley it is A. a. sulfurea), while all over the limestone 
‘meadows at the top of the Pordoi Pass, the lawn is full of typical 
A. a. sulfurea, though here, indeed, in a poor and wizen guise. On 
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