10 Days Alpine Visit
Lecture by a Doncaster Botanist
As briefly stated in our last issue, a most interesting lecture was given by Miss C. L. Corbett, M.B., Vic., to the members of the Doncaster Naturalist Society last week, on the most notable flowers picked during a ten days’ visit to the Alps and the southern part of Switzerland. To-day we give extracts from the paper :-
The lecturer said the walk began at Sion in the Rhone Valley at an altitude of about 1,700 feet, a little lower than the top of Kinder Scout. The Rhone Valley is here running roughly westwards. The walk was due south and continuously upwards along one of the southern tributaries called the Borgne, up into the mountains around the glaciers at its source. The first night was spent at Evolena, a village on the Borgne, at an altitude of 4, 721 feet (Ben Nevis 14,406 feet).
In the flat basin of the Rhone, the meadows besides the road were very gay with flowers, but those noticed were chiefly flowers well-known in England, though not all very common as wild flowers. Centaursa cyanris, cicorium intybus, adonis autumnalis, a species of relphinium, and lychnis githago were seen in great abundance.
Mounting up the steep side of the Rhone Valley into the tributary Borgne valley, the marshy banks were dotted with parnassia palustris. Campanula glomerata was seen here and there in the fields, and campanula trachelium was abundant.
Further on flowers became more noticeable that are unknown in England. Near a place called Useigne, a large pale yellow sage, salvia glutinosa, with sticky flowers, and a very fierce dour was abundant. The large deep-purple corolla of Salvia pratensis was also seen scattered over the hill side.
At Useigne are some celebrated earth pillars, tall conical spikes of solidified glacial deposit, each crowned with a large stone which had formed the pillar by preserving that column of earth when the rest of the valley suffered glacial denudation.
Between Useigne and Evolena polygonatum multiflorum, in berry, was seen growing by the road-side, and a digitalis lutea, which is about as tall as D. purpureum, but smaller and delicately formed pale yellow bells. Around Evolena the fields were full of colctucum autumnale.
From Evolena to Arolla, (4,000 to 6,000 feet), the flowers became more definitely alpine. Blue alpine gentians were dotted among the grass. In the woods were seen the large silky pale blue bells of Campanula barbata. On the hill sides were deep crimson dots of dianthus carthusianorum, and large pink flowers of dianthus sylvestris.
Arolla is a little village at the foot of the glacia, and is 6,00 feet in altitude. It consists of three white hotels and a small group of brown chalets. The pine woods around are rich in flowers. There are shrubs of a small wild Rhododendron, and ferrugineum, bearing loose panicles of red flowers, and gentiana purpureum with a clustered head of dark-red purple flowers, each as big as a fox-glove bell, and there are all green spikes of Veratrium album. Purple monkshood grows there, and still
more abundantly a large yellow variety, aconitum lycoctonum. There is a handsome thistle Cirsium spinossissimum consisting of a closely packed mass of 15-20 heads surrounded by a cup 4-6 inches in diameter of pale yellow-green opinons divided leaves.
Among the rocks in the valley are masses of yellow, and many varieties of white, saxifrage, purple alpine toadflax, little blue bells of campanula pusilla, rich scarlet stars of sempervivum aracharoidum, and pink cushions of silene acaulis.
Rare flowers were found high up on the passes above, as the lovely dryascoctopala, looking like a group of wild roses growing close to the ground, and one green slope high up on the mountains side was dotted all over with edelweiss.
The lecture was illustrated with lantern slides. A discussion followed, and a hearty vote of thanks was accorded Miss Corbett.