198 BLUE TO PURPLE 



The tiny leaves, which are very numerous and extremely 

 narrow and pointed, distinguish it from Saxifraga oppositi- 

 folia, or Mountain Saxifrage (see page 213), which has similar 

 flowers but distinctly broader leaves. 



Close to the eternal snows, where the last line of vegetation 

 grows prostrate upon the earth, so rare the air, so scarce and 

 poor the soil, 



" There, cleaving to the ground, it lies 

 With multitude of purple eyes 

 Spangling a cushion green like moss." 



Surely Wordsworth must have found the Moss Campion 

 amongst his beloved Grasmere Hills, otherwise he could not 

 have penned so perfect a description of its starry flowers with 

 their five purple or very occasionally white petals wide-blown 

 by the mountain breeze. 



The Moss Campion has a very large tap-root, and springing 

 from it are the slender branching stems, which form dense tufts 

 from six to twenty inches in diameter and resemble a coarse 

 moss. Down into these tufts the flowers are closely set. 



WILD FLAX 



Linum Lewisii. Flax Family 



Stems: slender, erect. Leaves: crowded, sessile, oval-linear, acute. 

 Flowers : on long pedicels ; sepals oval, obtuse ; petals five, large, blue, 

 fugacious. 



A slender dainty plant, which bends and bows to every 

 passing breeze, and bears terminal clusters as well as racemes 

 of lovely cerulean flowers. 



" Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax," 



wrote Longfellow, and if you once see the wonderful blue 

 of these blossoms you will well understand the compliment 

 intended, for they are a marvellous colour, and so frail and 

 translucent that they wither at a single touch, while the deli- 

 cately veined petals fall almost as soon as they develop into 



