GENTIANA. 
come amiss to it. It is a treasure of local occurrence only, and its 
neighbourhood may always be guessed from the superiority of the 
typical Vernas in those parts; so that, if the normal G. verna of an 
alp is good, you may usually reckon on soon finding G. aestiva, which 
may always be known at a glance, not only by its special amplitude and 
clumpiness, but by the folds of the baggier calyx, of which all five 
are exaggerated into deep flaps or wings of green, a symptom never 
found in the neatly folded five-angled flower-cup of G@. verna. 
G. affinis is a narrow-leaved Cluster-gentian from moist places in 
Minnesota, &c. It grows from 4 to 16 inches high, and has its blossoms 
in a thyrse-like spire, these being blue, with the folds between the 
lobes of the corolla almost as large as the lobes themselves and fringed 
into a ragged crest. (Summer.) 
G. algida, of Siberia and Central Japan, comes near to Gt. septemfida, 
but is not quite so good, sending up erect stems clad in pairs of large 
oval-pointed leaves with a-bunch of blue trumpets at the top in 
summer. 
G. alpina. See under G. “ acaulis.” 
G. altaica is a magnificent little species, after the habit of G. 
pyrenaica, making a dense minute tuft of oblong pointed leaves, 
from which are sent up countless stems of half an inch or so, each 
carrying a single great violet-blue bell, much larger than G. pyrenaica’s 
in proportion to the calyx. The folds between the lobes are rounded 
and scalloped. This beautiful Unknown should have the consideration 
of all the choice jewels when we get it ; at present, when the name 
appears, it is found by sad experience to cover a huge and hideous 
leafy species of the decumbens persuasion. 
G. amoena dwells high in Sikkim, at some 17,000 feet—a glistering 
tuffet often of no inches at all, and never of more than 2 inches. The 
flowerless shoots are leafy and succulent ; the flowering ones contrive 
to branch, and are densely wrapped in overlapping little blunt obovate 
leaves with a glistening edge. The lobes of the big blue bell stand 
erect. 
G. Andrewsii is the Gentian that never wakes up. It has a slender 
stem of some 9 inches, at the top of which in summer appear two or 
three long bulging bags of dull dark-blue, tipped with white. These 
give high hope of glory ; unfortunately they never do any more. In 
America, where it lives, the disappointing plant is known as Dumb 
Foxglove, and, as it never opens or has any charm, there seems no 
reason, except its indestructible easiness, why it should so often find 
a place in catalogues. 
—G. angulosa=G. aestiva, q.v. 
(1,919) . 369 2A 
