Paw son : Mountain Plajits at the Seaside. 



43 



mountains it chooses the highest, stoniest, and most innutritions 

 soil. The Silene is the only true rock plant of the group. It 

 roots in clefts and crevices of the cliffs and crags, and its habit 

 is diffuse and pendulous. The Scurvy-grass is perhaps no more 

 than a biennial : very few of our crucifers are of longer duration. 

 It is always a waterside plant or a denizen of wet soil. On 

 the mountains you will find it on dripping ledges or among 

 the spongy growth where springs issue, associated often with 

 Montia fontana, Chrysosplenhnn oppositifolhun, and in choice 

 spots with Saxifraga stellaris. It is often brought down by 

 w^ater from the heights, as its inflated seed pods lend themselves 

 to this mode of transportation ; but it is not permanent in such 

 situations. It is only to be. found by the side of streams which 

 have their sources in the mountains where it is at home. Such 

 colonies are short-lived, but they are continually recruited from 

 above. 



What the Arctic plants chiefly desired was to get out of 

 the w^ay of the overbearing newcomers, so they climbed the 

 mountains until they left their pursuers behind them. Is it not 

 likely that some of them would also find an uncoveted refuge in 

 the barren cliff's and sands of the sea-coast ? 



Doubtless the climate of our mountains is better suited to 

 Arctic plants, as a whole, than the climate of our sea-shores ; 

 but a few of them are nowise particular about atmospheric 

 conditions, as witnesses their occupation of Alpine heights, where 

 the midday heat is often excessive. Dryas octopetala, a typical 

 plant of the extreme north, not only inhabits the Alps but 

 flourishes also near sea-level in Co. Clare. Seduni rliodiola, 

 which in England only grows on the wet rocks of our highest 

 mountains, which survives too in the Alps, is in the North of 

 Scotland most at home in the moist crannies of the sea-cliff's. 



Mountain plants — that is, these refugees of which we are 

 speaking — are often grown in gardens, where it is difficult 

 enough to provide the conditions to which they are accustomed. 

 We can give them rockwork and proper soil, but how about the 

 cloud-moisture, and the blanket of snow beneath w^hich they 

 sleep, unconscious of wind or frost, during half the year ? How- 

 shall we supply the continuous drip of the weeks when this 

 snow is melting and they are making their growth? Still, 

 many of these plants will thrive fairly well on a garden rockery, 

 if only they have their little stations all to themselves. What 

 they cannot and will not put up with is to be crowded and 

 jostled and bullied by bigger plants. Most of tlieni choose 



1905 February i. 



