PLANTS AT GREAT ELEVATIONS 173 



Flowering Plants occur as high as 18,000 feet, while 

 in the Bolivian Andes, species have been found 

 growing at 18,700 feet, if not higher. 



The late John Ball, a great authority on Alpine 

 plants, relates how, when botanising on the Aletsch 

 Glacier (Bernese Oberland), the largest snowfield in 

 Europe, he found no less than forty plants in 

 flower, including the Common Thyme and the still 

 commoner Dandelion, on a slope of fine debris, clear 

 of snow, at an elevation of about 10,700 feet. This 

 is by no means an exceptional instance. 



De Saussure, one of the earliest naturalists to 

 devote serious attention to nature in the Alps, and 

 the famous leader of the first party to reach the 

 summit of Mont Blanc, related how, in 1796, he 

 found Silene acaulis growing on that mountain 

 at an elevation of 11,450 feet, and Androsace 

 glacialis, near the Col de Geant, at about the same 

 height. The celebrated Swiss botanist, Dr Christ, 

 states that at least thirteen Flowering Plants have 

 been found on the Thdodule Pass, 10,900 feet, 

 between Zermatt and Breuil. Here the mean tem- 

 perature for the year is known to be - 5"59° C, 

 the minimum - 21 '4° C, and the maximum + 15*1° C. 



The well-known " Jardin " of the Mer de Glace, 

 above Chamonix, is perhaps the most reputed of the 

 higher localities for Alpine flowers in the Alps. The 

 flora of this favoured spot, on a moraine of the glacier, 

 having an area of about 7 acres, and forming, as it 

 were, an island in a sea of ice, has been repeatedly 



