GENTIANA. 
awake trumpet of the most lovely azure-blue. It is predominantly if 
not exclusively a limestone plant, and may be seen very abundant and 
in great beauty in the Dolomites, always at higher levels than those 
which produce G. latifolia, until at last indeed one gets to associate it 
with the summit ridges of the high calcareous ranges where, even in 
the topmost inhospitable white rocks of Monte Baldo, it makes glossy 
tufts carrying half a dozen celestial goblets ; this tuft-forming tendency 
combining, with the gloss of its stiff dark leaves, the pure tone of its 
flowers, and the plant’s leanings toward lime, to make one suspect 
that here is one of the parents responsible long ago, perhaps through 
Clusius or Aicholtz, for the generation in our gardens of G. Gentianella. 
Its range overlaps that of G@. latifolia all round, except at the extreme 
south-western corner below Geneva where the species come into contact 
for once, but there produce no intermediates ; again, in the Eastern 
ranges, the two occur together, but at different heights (G. x digenea 
is their result, q.v.). As, for instance, on the way up to the Forcella 
Lungieres under the Drei Zinnen you will cross lawns all tufted with 
indigo masses of G. latifolia at the upper alpine level, but it will not be 
till you have reached the ridge itself, and left G. latifolia a couple of 
hundred feet or more below, that you will begin to come on clumps of 
G. vulgaris, so undescribably brave and heartening in the cheery stiff 
gloss of its dark-green pointed clustered foliage, no less than in the 
sturdy magnificence of its broad-lobed sapphire bells, which are no 
less brilliant in the garden, and even in the moraine — Here exds the 
group once covered by G. acaulis, L. 
G. aestiva may be held to have attained specific rank. It is the 
plant like a very much glorified G. verna that may be found here and 
there on the Alps in company with G. verna, and often so fading into 
it by degrees as to be at last suspected of being merely a large variety. 
The type is, however, so definite that it seems easier to suppose it a 
true species interbreeding with G. verna, and so producing many 
shades between the two closely-allied parents. There is no doubt,as 
to the distinctness of G. aestiva as a garden species. It is, briefly, G. 
verna with twice the size of flower, twice the solidity and brilliance, 
twice the length of stem, and more than twice the vigour of habit. 
It does not, moreover, run about so much as sit still, in large and 
tidy widening clumps of foliage much ampler and glossier than that 
‘of G. verna, from which it sends up stalwart blossoms all the spring, 
summer, and autumn through. In the garden it has the further 
merit of being by far the easiest of all the alpine Gentians ; indeed, so 
hearty, and of temper so good, that no soil or situation seems to 
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