58 SUB-ALPINE PLANTS 



Trollius L. 



Perennial herbs with divided leaves and yellow or orange flowers. 

 Sepals 5 to 15, large and petaloid. Real petals small, linear, and 

 flat. Stamens numerous. Carpels several, each with several seeds. 



There are a few species from N. Asia and N. America, besides the 

 European species. 



Trollius europcBus L. Globe-flower (Plate X.) 



Stem erect, 1^2 J feet, simple and i -flowered or branched and 

 2-3 flowered, glabrous like the whole plant. Leaves palmately 

 5-cleft, lower ones stalked, upper leaves sessile ; divisions rhom- 

 boidal, 3-cleft, unequally cut. Sepals yellow, almost closed into 

 a ball. Follicles glabrous, linear, obliquely wrinkled, turning black 

 when ripe, seeds black. 



Damp Alpine and sub-alpine meadows and mountain declivities, 

 often in great masses, sometimes extending to 8000 feet in altitude. 

 In Great Britain it is almost confined to sub-alpine districts in the 

 north and west ; but it actually descends, or did fifteen years ago, 

 the valley of the Taff to within a mile or two of the town of Cardiff. 

 May to July. 



Distribution. — Carpathians, Eastern, Central, and Western Alps, 

 Black Forest, Vosges, Jura, Auvergne, Cevennes ; Corbi^res and 

 Pyrenees ; Europe, especially northern and central, as far as the 

 Caucasus. 



It grows freely in almost any soil, and thrives in a stiff loam with 

 a moist subsoil. Globe-flowers rarely vegetate until the spring 

 following the year in which the seeds are sown, but they do not 

 attain full development until about the fourth year. 



Helleborus L. Hellebore. 



Perennial herbs with palmately or pedately divided leaves. 

 Sepals 5, large, often greenish, remaining till the fruit is nearly ripe. 

 Real petals 8-10, very small, tubular. Stamens numerous. Carpels 

 several, large, with several seeds. 



Helleborus niger L. Christmas Rose. 



Rootstock thick, oblique, knobbed, with black fibres. Stem 

 erect, simple, glabrous like the whole plant, 3-6 inches high, usually 

 I, rarely 2-flowered, leafless, having 2 or 3 elliptical or ovate bracts 

 in the upper part. Leaves radical, large, coriaceous, stalked, 

 pedate, 7-9 cleft ; divisions undivided or 2-3 cleft, linear-lanceolate 

 or wedge-shaped, acute, toothed. Flowers nodding, handsome,' 

 2-3 inches in diameter, white or rose-tinted, ultimately green. Petals 

 and stamens yellow. Sepals petaloid, elliptical. FoUicle (capsule) 

 elongate, obliquely veined, with a long beak. 



The leaves spring up after the flowers, but remain through the 



