. Alpine flowers for English gardens . Mountain plants. I04 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part I. the decayed leaves of the tree ferns and pakns at Kew to re- main on and clpthe their shafts—before always rigidly trimmed. Disappointed in finding a rich flora of the small alpine plants in the neighbourhood of Macugnaga, we resolved to descend into the plains of Lombardy, cross the lakes of North Italy, go as far as Lecco on the lake of Como, ascend Monte Campione, and find Silene Elisabethce, a plant as rare as beautiful, and any like subjects which that region might afford. The long and ever-varying Val Anz
. Alpine flowers for English gardens . Mountain plants. I04 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part I. the decayed leaves of the tree ferns and pakns at Kew to re- main on and clpthe their shafts—before always rigidly trimmed. Disappointed in finding a rich flora of the small alpine plants in the neighbourhood of Macugnaga, we resolved to descend into the plains of Lombardy, cross the lakes of North Italy, go as far as Lecco on the lake of Como, ascend Monte Campione, and find Silene Elisabethce, a plant as rare as beautiful, and any like subjects which that region might afford. The long and ever-varying Val Anzasca, which runs from the foot of Monte Rosa to the great road from the Simplon, is un- surpassed for the grandeur, beauty, and variety of its scenery. We started from the Hotel Monte Moro at about half past three in the morning, when several of the highest peaks were il- lumined by a ruddy light, and all the lower ones were in the. Fig. 67.—Cascade in a high wood. dull grey of daybreak. Almost every step revealed a fresh pros- pect of the mountains. We saw very little of the rare vegetation of the valley, having to hurry on to Milan without diverging from the pathway; but the beauty of the orange Lily in the grass was something quite remarkable. Not growing higher than the grass, and in single specimens, not tufts, the effect was not what we are accustomed to in Lilies. By looking over a ledge now and then, one of those small alpine meadows, apparently stolen from the vast wilderness, was seen thinly studded with large fully-expanded Lily blooms, every flower relieved by the fresh grass. It was beautiful! Asplenium septentrionale was ex- tremely abundant. Of flowers we saw but few, for the taller tree vegetation cuts off the view and runs up and clothes the secondary mountains to the very summits,- except where grass that is like velvet spreads out as if it were to show the. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally e
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1870
