CHAPTER II 



ALPINE FRUITS AND BERRIES 



Many of those who visit the Alps in late summer or in autumn 

 miss the great wealth of flowers which form such a feature in 

 the landscape earlier in the season. Many visitors arrive too 

 late to see even the lingering blossoms of Rhododendron, the 

 Alpen Rose or Rose des Alpes, of which the Swiss are so justly proud ; 

 while the small deep blue Gentians are in August found only on the 

 higher mountains, and never in the splendid luxuriance of June. 

 Their place is taken in autumn by the pretty Fringed Gentian 

 (G. ciliata), a biennial species with long hairs on the margin of the 

 corolla-lobes — which loves shaly limestone slopes, both in the 

 Alps and foot-hills, and by Gentiana germanica with its purple-red 

 flowers which continue in bloom in the sub-Alps until mid-October. 

 The handsome ultramarine spikes of the Willow Gentian (Gentiana 

 ascle-piadea) may also be seen adorning mountain thickets and 

 shady slopes until the end of September, but the plant is rare in 

 Western Switzerland and the Jura. The beautiful Marsh Gentian 

 (Gentiana Pneumonanthe) , which brightens some of the damp, 

 sandy heaths in Dorset, Hants, and Yorkshire is another autumn 

 flower which is perhaps as beautiful as any when its large blue 

 bells streaked with green open to the stmUght, and stand erect some- 

 times singly on a stalk and sometimes in threes and fours on leafy 

 stems a foot or eighteen inches high. The Marsh Gentian is 

 more scattered in Switzerland than in England, but perhaps less 

 abundant locally. 



In late summer and in autumn, long after the meadows and 

 the lower pastures have been mown a second time, and when the 

 characteristic forest flora has also mostly disappeared, the numerous 

 red and ' black ' berries are continually attracting the eye of even 

 the most casual of visitors to the mountains. Long before the 

 end of such a hot and dry season as that of 1911, when many plants 

 were withered up prematurely, berries and fruits of various kinds 

 and many colours were particularly noticeable, and often they 

 formed the chief means of table decoration in Swiss hotels, in 

 addition to sounding the loudest note of colour in the woods and 

 on the mountain-side. 



