In My Vicarage Garden 



everywhere in hundreds, and you could not help 

 treading on the little beauty. I do not think it 

 was finer than I have seen it at Malham and 

 Ingleborough in Yorkshire ; but I saw many 

 specimens of a far richer and deeper colour than 

 I have seen in England. The Alpine rose was 

 everywhere, and was in its fullest beauty at that 

 high elevation, though near Hospenthal it was 

 almost past flowering. I delight in the alpenrose, 

 not only for its bright flowers, which give such a 

 colour to so many Swiss hillsides, but because it 

 is the only rhododendron (except R. Dahuricum, 

 which some consider only a geographical variety) 

 that will grow on soil charged with lime. To me 

 the faint smell is rather pleasant, though to some 

 it is quite unpleasant ; and at Piora I learned two 

 facts about it which I had not noted before. 

 There is everywhere wet, marshy ground on the 

 hillsides, not bad enough to stop a walker, but 

 enough to make his feet damp. I noticed that 

 wherever I could see an Alpenrose the walking 

 was good and firm, though it may have appeared 

 to be growing in a marsh. The other thing I 

 learnt about it was that it gives most valuable 

 protection to many plants. I suppose it is not 

 grazed by cattle, sheep, or goats, and the result is 

 that many good plants come up right in the 

 midst of the bushes, and, I suppose, protected by 

 them. I found many grand specimens of Aqiii- 

 legia alpina so growing ; also Streptopus amplexi- 

 caulis and others ; and nestling round the outside 

 198 



