68 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 



27); the sea Mertensia (Mertensia maritimd]^ with 

 its purple-blue flowers and glaucous leaves, is 

 scattered among the shingle on the beach. Here 

 can be seen in profusion, in company with a host 

 of other plants, yard-high stems of Archangeltca 

 clasped by the large and handsome leaves and 

 bearing candelabra-like umbels of small yellow- 

 green flowers (left-hand upper corner, Fig. 30), a 

 plant familiar to us from its use as a sweetmeat 

 and highly prized by the Eskimo as an article of 

 food; also the large and almost circular bright 

 green leaves, four inches or more in breadth, and 

 inconspicuous flowers of a northern species, which 

 occurs in Switzerland and the Pyrenees, Akhemilla 

 glomerulans, closely related to our Lady's Mantle; 

 the tall flowering spikes of the Orchid, Habenarta 

 albida (Fig. 3 1), akin to the Frog Orchis of Britain; 

 also Habenaria hyperborea and smaller plants of the 

 Tway Blade Orchid (Listera cordata\ and here and 

 there a few of the delicate and singularly attractive 

 mauve, tasselled flowers of an Alpine Meadow Rue 

 (Thalictrum alpinum): 



So blooms this lovely plant, nor dreads 

 Her annual funeral. 



The Butterwort (Pinguicula) was found in full 

 bloom on the boggy ground. A few ferns mix their 

 graceful fronds with the foliage of the flowering 

 plants, and other, generally smaller ferns, pass 

 their life hanging on the vertical faces or in 

 fissures of rocks. The ferns include Aspidium 

 Lonchitis, the Holly Shield fern, Dryopteris linneana, 

 and Cystopteris fragility the Brittle Bladder fern. A 



