18G JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



NOTES ON RECENT RESEARCH. 



Alpine Plants. 



Plant Distribution in the Alps. By A. Engler. {Not. Konig. Bot. 

 Berlin, Appendix, vii., Feb. 1901.) — An interesting paper on the plant 

 communities of the Alps and the geographical distribution of Alpine 

 species generally throughout the ranges. 



The paper is noteworthy in several respects, but its primary purpose 

 is to show how the Director of the new Berlin Botanical Gardens 

 proposes to arrange the plants on the miniature mountains, valleys, 

 swamps, and watercourses, so as to exhibit their natural habitats and 

 assemblages. 



As an instance, certain meadows in the Beech and Conifer regions of 

 the lower Alps abound in such plants as Carum Carui, Plantago lanceo- 

 lata, Achillea Millefolium, Bcllis i)crennis, Leontodon hastilis, Hypo- 

 chceris radicata, Carlina acmdis, Thyinus Chamcedrys, Prunella vul- 

 garis, Banunculus acris, and species of Ehinanthus, Euphrasia, &c. 

 Among these occur Genista sagittalis and Gentiana lutca in the West of 

 Switzerland. This particular type of meadow is dominated by two 

 grasses, Cynosurus cristatus and Agrostis vulgaris, and it is evident that, 

 apart from the Gentians and the Genista, such a plant community is by 

 no means especially Alpine — we could match it in many English 

 meadow^s. Engler terms this the Kammgrass-wcide formation, which 

 we might render Dog's-tail-meadow. 



To take a very different example. There occurs at the upper limits of 

 woody plants on the siliceous soils of the Central Alps and elsewhere, at 

 great heights, a characteristic flora in which the Ling {Calluna) and the 

 dwarf .Juniper (/. comimtnis var. nana) predominate, mingled with 

 which various species of Vaccinium, of Lycopodium, and the so-called 

 Reindeer Moss " (Cladonia rangiferina) are conspicuous. Remains of 

 a richer preceding vegetation exist in the form of such typically Alpine 

 plants as Anemone alpina, Campanula harhata, C. Scheuchzeri, Arnica 

 montana, Hypochceris nniflora, Antennaria dioica, &c., though these are 

 more abundant in other communities of the higher Alps. This plant 

 formation is termed by Engler that of the Dwarf .Juniper and Ling — 

 expressed in their German equivalents of course. 



These two examples will serve to show^ what the author means by his 

 Alpine plant formations, or plant communities as they are sometimes 

 called, and plenty of other examples will occur to those who have read the 

 oecological works of Warming, Schnnper, and other recent authorities. Of 

 such communities, occurring on various soils — wet or dry, calcareous, 

 siliceous, or humus — at particular elevations and aspects, exposed on 

 rocky, barren slopes, or sheltered in nooks and crannies, scorched by the 

 summer sun, or in the ^oerennial ice-water of the glacier streams, or at 

 the edges of snow-fields, and so forth, Engler enumerates and describes 

 in some detail no fewer than sixty-two. Nineteen of these are selected 

 from the sub-Alpine and higher regions of the Northern calcareous 



