293 SPRING FLOWERS OF THE SOUTH OF EUROPE. [October, 



cited. The equivalent of Anemone nemorosa in central Italy is 

 A. apennina, one of the doubtful plants of our Flora ; and this 

 is certainly as beautiful and nearly as abundant, where it prevails, 

 as A. nemorosa, but it prevails only in a limited range. In 

 southern Italy the place is occupied by the starlike A. hortensis. 

 But neither of these is found, except as a rarity, in the south of 

 France. The blue and red Anemone of our gardens, A. corona- 

 ria, is the most widely diffused of all the Anemones of the South, 

 and in the places where it is most abundant, it is one of the most 

 gorgeous flowers of the year. But this, though commoner than 

 the two others, is but partially distributed in Mediterranean 

 France. The substitutes for our Broom and Furze are much 

 more inadequate. There is a small Furze, Ulew provincialis, 

 {parvifiorus of Grenier and Godron,) extremely local in its dis- 

 tribution, neither so large nor so beautiful as our dwarf Furze, 

 and which can at most be allowed to pair off with Genista an- 

 glica. In almost every part of Europe, however, there is some 

 prickly Leguminous plant, which in early spring colours the land- 

 scape with its yellow blossoms. In Sicily it is Calycotome spi- 

 nosa, formerly a Cytisus. In the south of France and the neigh- 

 bouring provinces of Spain, it is Genista Scorpius, a low bush, 

 whose thorny branches, spreading on every side, are very rough 

 to handle. Later in the year those regions are dotted over with 

 the stately and powerfully fragrant Spartium junceum, the Spa- 

 nish Broom of our gardens ; but this is a summer ornament, a 

 plant of the Cistine period. Still later the Genista tinctoria dis- 

 plays itself with a beauty and luxuriance far greater than in our 

 colder climate. Advancing from the plains to the mountain 

 regions of the Cevenues and the eastern Pyrenees, and leaving 

 the Spartium junceum at their foot, we come first upon the 

 English Broom in the lower zone of the mountains, among the 

 Chestnut and Beech woods; then, above these, another Broom, 

 more bushy, tougher, coarser, but still beautiful, Sarothamnus 

 purgans. All these plants are highly gregarious, and colour 

 great spaces of country in a similar manner to our Furze and 

 Broom ; but, if we except S. junceum, they are far inferior. Not 

 one of them has either the height, the size of flowers, the de- 

 licate enamel-like polish of corolla, nor combines so rich a ver- 

 dure with its golden inflorescence, as those matchless ornaments 

 of our spring. 



