20 SWITZERLAND IN EARLY SUMMER 



blue forget-me-nots, and the golden potentillas, are usual 

 components of the Alpine meadow. At Murren, and no 

 doubt commonly elsewhere, there are a few very beautiful 

 grasses among the flowers, but the most remarkable grass 

 is one {Poa alpina), which has on every spikelet or head 

 a bright green serpent-like streamer. Each of these 

 "streamers" is, in fact, a young grass-plant, budded off 

 " viviparously," as it is called, from the flower-head, or 

 " spikelet," and having nothing to do with the proper 

 fertilised seed or grain. The young plants so budded fall 

 to the ground, and striking root rapidly, grow into separate 

 individuals. It is probably owing to some condition in 

 Alpine meadows adverse to the production of fertilised 

 seed that this viviparous method of reproduction has been 

 favoured, since it occurs also in an Alpine meadow-plant 

 allied to the buckwheat, namely. Polygonum viviparum 

 (not the kind mentioned above), where the lower flowers 

 are converted into little red bulbs, by which the plant 

 propagates. Both the viviparous grass and the polygonum 

 are found in England. In fact, a very large proportion of 

 Alpine plants occur in parts of the British islands (a legacy 

 from the glacial period), though many which are abundant 

 in Switzerland are rare and local here. 



At a lower level, in the woods, we come upon other 

 plants, not really " Alpine " at all, but of great and 

 special beauty. We found four kinds of winter-green 

 {Pirold), one with a very large, solitary flower, white and 

 wax-like, and the beautiful white butterfly-orchid, with 

 nectaries three quarters of an inch long, and other large- 

 flowered orchids. We were anxious to find the noble 

 Martagon lily, and hunted in many glades and forest 

 borders for it. At last, on a concealed bank in a wood, 

 between Glion and Les Avants, it revealed itself in 

 quantity, many specimens standing over three feet in 

 height. Martagon is an Arabic word, signifying a Turkish 



