. Flowers and their pedigrees . eyat last acquire such weak and feeble constitu-tions that they finally dwindle away imperceptiblyfor want of a healthy infusion of fresh externalblood. If I mention a few other like cases (as well as Ican remember them on the spur of the moment, for Icannot pretend to give a complete ex-cathedra listhere on the slopes of Mynydd Mawr) it will help toelucidate the origin and nature of this little colony ofmountain tulips. There is a lovely orchid, the ladysslipper, common in Siberia and Russia, almost up tothe Arctic Circle, but now found with us only in oneYorks
. Flowers and their pedigrees . eyat last acquire such weak and feeble constitu-tions that they finally dwindle away imperceptiblyfor want of a healthy infusion of fresh externalblood. If I mention a few other like cases (as well as Ican remember them on the spur of the moment, for Icannot pretend to give a complete ex-cathedra listhere on the slopes of Mynydd Mawr) it will help toelucidate the origin and nature of this little colony ofmountain tulips. There is a lovely orchid, the ladysslipper, common in Siberia and Russia, almost up tothe Arctic Circle, but now found with us only in oneYorkshire station, where, like the Perthshire heath, itis rapidly verging to complete local extinction. Again,among one family alone, the tufted saxifrage has nowbeen driven to the summits of Ben Avers and BenNevis ; the drooping saxifrage is extinct everywherein Britain save on the cloudy top of Ben Lawers; the A Mountain Tulip. 19 ^ brook saxifrage lingers on upon the same moun-tain, as well as on Ben Nevis and Lochnagar ; and the. Fig. 42,—Ladys Slipper (Cypripedium calceolius). Alpine saxifrage, though more frequent in little solitarygroups in Scotland and the Lake district, has died out 192 Flowers and their Pedigrees, of all Ireland save only on the bald head of Ben Bulbenin Sligo. The Alpine sow-thistle, an Arctic andsnowy weed, is now dying- out with us on the tops ofLochnagar and the Clova mountains. The black bear-berry yet haunts Ben Nevis and a few other Highlandpeaks. The Alpine butterwort has been driven evenfrom the mountains in Scotland generally, but stilldrags on a secluded existence in a few very northernbogs of Caithness and Sutherland ; in this respect Itresembles the northern holy-grass, an Arctic plant,which Robert Dick, the self-taught botanist of Thurso,discovered among the high pastures near his nativetown. This same grass strangely reappears in NewZealand, whither it has doubtless been carried fromSiberia by its seeds accidentally clinging to the feetof
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1884
