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He met me with a carriage at Culoz, to give and enjoy my first impressions of the distant Alps, and for the ten days we stopped at Geneva I stayed with him at the Hotel des Bergues. We climbed the Saleve, and I saw what gave me more pleasure, I confess, than the distant view of Mont Blanc, which he expected me to be enthusiastic over, the soldanella and gentians.
The first time I saw the Soldanella Alpina, before spoken of, it was growing of magnificent size on a sunny Alpine pasture, among bleating of sheep, and lowing of cattle, associated with a profusion of Geum Montanum, and Ranunculus Pyrenæus. I noticed it only because new to me nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven flower.
This is very good boiled with salt-meat in the spring, when other vegetables are scarce. It is valuable to the poor people; and is, in general, a common plant under hedges. SEA BINDWEED. Convolvulus Soldanella. This plant is to be found plentifully on our maritime coasts, where the inhabitants plucks the tender stalks, and pickle them. It is considered to have a cathartic quality.
For the first time I plucked the Convolvulus soldanella, which trails along the high-water mark its ropes of glossy green leaves and its great pink bellflowers. Withdrawn into his white, flat, heavily-keeled shell, a curious Snail, Helix explanata, was slumbering, in groups, on the bent grasses.
Some, surely, can recollect, at their first sight of the Alpine Soldanella, the Rhododendron, or the black Orchis, growing upon the edge of the eternal snow, a thrill of emotion not unmixed with awe; a sense that they were, as it were, brought face to face with the creatures of another world; that Nature was independent of them, not merely they of her; that trees were not merely made to build their houses, or herbs to feed their cattle, as they looked on those wild gardens amid the wreaths of the untrodden snow, which had lifted their gay flowers to the sun year after year since the foundation of the world, taking no heed of man, and all the coil which he keeps in the valleys far below.
Soldanella Alpina. I think it is the only Alpine flower which actually pierces snow, though I have seen gentians filling thawed hoof-prints. Crocuses are languid till they have had sun for a day or two. But the soldanella enjoys its snow, at first, and afterwards its fields. I have seen it make a pasture look like a large lilac silk gown. It has been well shown by Dr.
It is the fate of these poor flowers to spring and flourish on the very skirts of retreating winter; they soon wither the frilled chalice of the soldanella shrivels up and the crocus fades away before the grass has grown; the sun, which is bringing all the other plants to life, scorches their tender petals.
Great belts of blue gentian hang like a zone on the mountain slopes; masses of yellow globe-flower star the upland pastures; nodding heads of soldanella lurk low among the rugged boulders by the glacier's side. No lowland blossoms have such vividness of colouring, or grow in such conspicuous patches.
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