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The pebbly fragments of the entire slope, which during spring-time were sparingly covered with dwarfish herbs, such as the Androsace occidentalis, Draba Caroliniana, Plantago Virginica, Scutellaria parvula, are now crowded with plants of taller growth and variegated blossoms.
Eighteen inches should be the very least. A plant like the alpine androsace is a tiny rosette, seemingly requiring no more than an inch or two of soil, but its roots are likely to be found following an earth-filled crevice in the rocks to the depth of a yard or so.
And what would you think of a wealth of gentians, large and small; great yellow arnicas; beautiful Martagon lilies; and St.-Bruno lilies; of every variety of daphne; of androsace, with its rose-coloured clusters; of the flame-coloured orchis; of saxifrage; of great, velvety campanulas; of pretty violet asters, wrapped in little, cravat-like tufting, to protect them from the cold?
Emile Javelle is not far away. Javelle climbed as by a religious impulse; his imagination was filled by Alpine shapes; he, like Ruskin, had forfeited his heart to the invisible snow-maiden that dwells above the clouds. When Javelle was a child his uncle showed him a collection of plants, and amongst them the "Androsace ... rochers du Mont Blanc."
In the afternoon we crossed the valley, and ascended Bhomtso, fording the river, whose temperature was 48 degrees. Some stupendous boulders of gneiss from Kinchinjhow are deposited in a broad sandy track on the north bank, by ancient glaciers, which once crossed this valley from Kinchinjhow. A woolly Leontopodium, Androsace, and some other plants assumed nearly the same mode of growth.
Relying upon this conclusion we infer that all of the three elementary species have umbels, some pedunculate and the others not. On this point they agree with the majority of the allied species in the genus and in other genera, as for instance in Androsace. Hence the conclusion that the common ancestors were perennial plants with a rootstock bearing their flowers in umbels or whorls on scapes.
On my arrival I found the villagers in a meadow, all squatted cross-legged in a circle, smoking their brass and iron pipes, drinking tea, and listening to a letter from the Rajah, concerning their treatment of me. Three species of Parnassia and six primroses made the turf gay, mixed with saxifrages, Androsace and Campanula.
The rest of the vegetation consisted of a Sedum, Nardostachys Jatamansi, Meconopsis horridula, a slender Androsace, Gnaphalium, Stipa, Salvia, Draba, Pedicularis, Potentilla or Sibbaldia, Gentiana and Erigeron alpinus of Scotland. The broad top of the hill was also of quartz, but covered with angular pebbles of the rocks transported from Kinchinjhow.
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