CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS 51 



But there are other high mountain plants and 

 these are often the most difficult to grow which 

 are not content merely with deep and narrow chinks 

 between the rocks. They are plants which, in their 

 native homes, obtain a continual supply of moisture 

 from the melting snows during their growing and 

 flowering season; and they need, therefore, a supply 

 of moisture, when they are grown in a rock garden, 

 in all hot and dry weather. They also usually need 

 as much sun as they can get; and, since in their native 

 mountains they are at rest and frozen hard for many 

 months of the year, they are apt to suffer very much 

 from the damp of an English (or American) winter, 

 and often require as sharp a drainage as the purely 

 saxatile plants. Plants of this kind often root deeply, 

 but they often also increase by means of runners which 

 travel below the surface of the soil and throw up 

 tufts in all directions. In this case they cannot be 

 grown in very narrow chinks, like the purely saxatile 

 plants, but must be given room enough for increase; 

 and this also makes it difficult to protect them from 

 drought. Gentiana verna is a plant of this kind; 

 and it has got the reputation of being difficult to grow, 

 because many people have treated it as if it were a 

 purely saxatile plant, stuffing it into some narrow 

 chink between the rocks in a place where no moisture 

 will stay on the surface. Gentiana verna is really 

 rather a plant of the Alpine pastures than of the 

 rocks; and it is usually seen on grassy slopes which 

 are watered by the melting snows during its flowering 



