The
learned in such matters call these rock-fallows _Karrenfelden_. When
we had crossed this plateau, and came to grass, we found a gorgeous
carpet of the huge couched blue gentian (_G. acaulis_, Fr. _Gentiane
sans tige_), with smaller patterns put in by the dazzling blue of the
delicate little flower of the same species (_G. verna_ ); while the
white blossoms of the grass of Parnassus, and the frailer white of the
_dryade a huit petales_, and the modest waxen flowers of the _Azalea
procumbens_ and the _airelle ponctuee_ (_Vaccineum vitis idaea_),
tempered and set off the prevailing blue. There were groves, too,
rather lower down, of Alpine roses (the first I had come across that
year), not the fringed or the green-backed species which botanists
love best, but the honest old rust-backed rhododendron, which every
Swiss traveller has been pestered with in places where the children
are one short step above mere mendicity, but, equally, which every
Swiss traveller hails with Medean delight when he comes upon it on the
mountain-side. We were now, too, in the neighbourhood of the first
created Alpen rose.
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