68 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
27); the sea Mertensia (Mertensia maritima), 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 Archangelica 
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, A/chemilla 
glomerulans, closely related to our Lady’s Mantle; 
the tall flowering spikes of the Orchid, Habenaria 
albida (Fig. 31), 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, Dryopseris linneana, 
and Cystopteris fragilis, the Brittle Bladder fern. A 
