ALPINE PLANTS AND THEIR TREATMENT. 



127 



Finally, any sorts like Kamondias, Haberleas, Jankaea can 

 be increased from the leaves (as is often done in the case of 

 Gloxinias), and others like Daphne, Coronilla, Betula can be 

 grafted on commoner sorts. 



The digging up of Alpine plants and transplanting them to 

 gardens was for many years the only method employed for in- 

 creasing them and furnishing rockeries ; but for many varieties 

 this not only injured the specimens transplanted — for many will 

 not bear the moving, and perish miserably without flowering — 

 but it also does great injury to the flora of the Alps or other 

 country whence the plants are taken, and the fears expressed by 

 naturalists of seeing certain rare plants disappear from the locali- 

 ties where they exist is not at all exaggerated ; indeed, it is a 

 fact that this has already happened in more than one instance 

 in Switzerland and other countries. The disappearance, for ex- 

 ample, of the very rare and interesting Spiranthes Bomanzoffiana 

 from Ireland, the only European station of the plant, is known 

 to all of you. Far, then, from being chimerical, our fears are 

 fully justified, and a movement has been started in Switzerland 

 for the purpose of preserving the wild plants in their respective 

 localities and for their protection generally. Notice the following 

 fact, for instance, as proof of the need for such a movement. We 

 have at only two or three miles distant from the boundary between 

 Tessin and Italy one of the most beautiful, as well as the rarest, 

 of all the Androsaces, A. Charpentieri. It grows nowhere in the 

 world but on three or four of the peaks about the Lake of Como, 

 and there are only a few specimens of it. The position of the 

 plants is well known — so well, indeed, that some German horti- 

 culturists have already been there many times to collect this rare 

 and distinct plant for sale ! Suppose, for a moment, that twenty 

 people, each taking twenty plants, annually visit the spot, and 

 in a very few years at most the species will be exterminated. I 

 got seeds of it some years ago, and sowed it at Geneva, raising 

 three plants of it, and planted them in the rockery of our Alpine 

 botanic garden, "The Linnea " in Valais, where they are now 

 very nourishing and give us a mass of seeds every year. I could 

 tell the same story of more than fifty rare Swiss plants, so that 

 I think you will agree with me in recommending everybody 

 always to reproduce rare plants by seed, cuttings, or division, 

 instead of rooting them up in a wild state. 



