GENTIANA. 
form, and they are carried on taller slighter stems of 3 inches or so. 
In the second, the foliage of G. bavarica is of a bright yellow-green note, 
quite distinct from the duller grey-green of G. verna; the leaves are 
glossy and brilliant, much smaller, much more numerous and never 
pointed at all, but little ovals packed upon the barren shoots, with 
the exact look of a smal! sprig of Box—G. verna’s being much fewer, 
paler, flatter, larger, broader, and always grooved and pointed. And 
for a last detail, as you follow down the shoot of G. verna the leaves 
get larger and larger, till the basal foliage of the rosette is much the 
biggest of all, spreading wide out upon the ground; if you follow 
down the serried leafy little shoots of G. bavarica, you find the cupped 
yellow-green ovals diminishing towards the base until the lowest are 
much the smallest of all, hugging the stem at its birth. So much 
for the differences between these two very different plants which, for 
the rest, are not often to be found in the same situations—G. verna not 
liking wet places, and G. bavarica insisting on them (and flowering, 
besides, much later in the season, when the main show of G. verna is 
well over). However, towards the upper-alpine levels they do some- 
times meet, or are found close at hand, a juxtaposition from which 
intermediates have resulted. In the garden G. bavarica wants 
thoroughly-wetted soil in summer, and should be planted in the 
water-bed close to the influence of the pipe ; it can also be quite happy 
in pure flocded silver sand ; and in districts where the rainfall is up to 
the average of Noah it will even thrive in silver-sanded peat in the 
open border. Get it to grow, and there will be no chariness of flower ; 
and this, too, in full and later summer, long after G. verna is only a 
memory. The species is local, but where found is usually abundant, 
always in damp places of the upper alpine turf, shores of lakes or 
marshes, sides of rivulets or water-cuttings, all along the central, 
Eastern, and Western ranges, never descending so low as G. verna, nor 
mounting so high. _It is a plant indifferent to lime or granite, and is 
as glorious in dark-blue velvet patches among the fallen limestone 
blocks on the way up to the Forcella Lungieres as on the high damp 
meadows of the granite above the Glocknerhaus. A violet form has 
been reported from the Mont Blanc range, and also an albino. 
G. bellidifolia, a most lovely stranger from the Alps of the North and 
South Islands of New Zealand up to 5500 feet. The spoon-shaped 
leaves, thick and fleshy, form a rosette clinging to the ground, and 
the noble white flowers are either alone on a stem of from 1 to 6 inches, 
or else borne in loose clusters, there being so many of these stems 
emerging from the crown that the clump becomes a dense dome of 
blossom. 
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