of red peppery berries is almost the commonest street tree.
It comes from South America and contains an astringent
resin in large amounts. If the leaves are soaked in water
they appear to wriggle about owing to the way in which
this resin pours out. Palms are so abundant that they are
generally associated with the region, the date palm, with its
huge pinnate leaves being specially common ; only the dwarf
palm is, however, native, all the others are introduced. The
oranges and their allies, the agrumi, as they are called in
Italy, are also not native, and in Italy generally, despite
Goethe, the orange has a distinctly hmited distribution.
Even in the vicinity of Naples the trees require protection
in winter. The two other trees of Mignon's song are native,
but the noble laurel, the Lorbeer of ecstatic German tourists,
owes its abundance to the fact that it is extensively planted.
As a native plant it is not common. Parenthetically one may



PLATE IX




A limestone cliff on the island of C'apii ; a few of the iilants
of the garigne manage to live in the interstices of tlie rock.



SWEET BAY



93



remark that though it is a handsome shrub, with its scented
leaves and the whitish flowers sometimes present on the same
twig as the fine purple fruits (Fig. 11), yet the tourist is scarcely




Fio. 11. — Sweet Bay or Noble Laurel, showing
flowers and fruit on the same spray.

justified in bursting into song — at least in pubhc places —
on the first sight of it in its Mediterranean glory. It should
be taken for granted that all civilised people do ' know the
land ' and have no desire to have the question put to them,



94



MYETLE AND BAY



as has happened several times to the writer, by casual travel-
ling companions !

Among the introduced plants of recent importation, recent
that is as compared with the orange, are the splendid North
American agaves, popularly called aloes (Fig. 1), which orna-
ment every rocky surface, and bear huge seed-spikes, and the
AustraUan eucalyptuses (Fig. 12), now very widely planted,

and of great interest
in spring, because of
the way in which the
curious cap falls ofF
the flowers and
allows the innumer-
able flufEy stamens
to expose themselves
to wind or insect.
Eucalyptuses are
markedly drought-
resisting, and it is
interesting to note
that their leaves
change in character
as the plants grow
older, and the
branches are thus
more fully exposed
to the sun and dry-
ing wind. Some also
of the numerous acacias of the Riviera are of Austrahan origin.
The acacias generally show some interesting adaptations to
enable them to withstand drought, and are worth careful
study on this account.

The prickly pears, which are now so widely spread and have
become wild almost everywhere, are of American origin.
Their insipid fruits can be bought in the markets as Indian




Fio. 12. — Eucalriptus globulus, an Australian
tree very commonly planted in southern
Europe, especially in the Mediterranean
region. The curious capped flowers are
characteristic, no less than the strong scent.



COMMON TOWN TREES 95

figs (fichi d'lndia), and in summer time their cactus flowers
are seen on the sides of the curious spiny ' racquets.' No
less than the agaves, the prickly pears are drought-resisting ;
they are indeed in origin desert plants, hence the way in
which they have thriven in the Mediterranean.

Among town trees in addition to those mentioned, one
should not omit the nettle tree (Celtis) which is abundantly
planted, e.g. in the streets of Naples, and figures largely in
the hterature of Provence, where it is common. In spring
in Naples and the vicinity one finds the tree leafless but
bearing its catkin-hke flowers. Later it becomes clothed
with its elm-hke leaves, easily recognised by the fact that
they are unequally developed at the base, and have one
side more toothed than the other. The little fruits hang
down singly from the branches, and are at first green, and
later become brownish black. They are about the size of
a small cherry, and are sweet to the taste when mature.
They are eaten in Spain, where the tree is much planted,
and also in Greece, where they were well known to the
ancients. The tree is native to the Mediterranean region,
but owes its present abundance to planting. It extends
beyond the limits of the area, but only there reaches a great
size.

Much more beautiful are the species of Catalpa, with
large dehcate leaves, white, sweet-scented flowers, and later
long, hanging pods. They are very favourite garden trees
in the moister regions of the Mediterranean and in the more
sheltered parts of Central Europe, and may be seen at their
best on Lake Maggiore. Somewhat similar in appearance
is the splendid Paulownia, the only tree in the snapdragon
family, which, as a tour de force, has been made to grow in
Scotland, and is abundant in Paris, but is most at home in
regions at once warm and fairly moist, and without much
wind. There are some beautiful specimens in Lisbon, where
the great masses of purple flowers can be seen in early spring,



96 MYETLE AND BAY

opening before the leaves. The fruits are a very curious
and decorative kind of capsule which spUt to allow the small
winged seeds to escape, and are sticky to the touch. The
tree is a native of Japan and is not drought-resisting in
summer, so that it can only be grown in the damp parts
of the Mediterranean region. Another beautiful flowering
tree often grown in towns is Sophora, a graceful pinnate-
leafed form which produces its bunches of greenish-white
flowers in July or August, and belongs to the same family
as the laburnum. It is one of the ornaments of, for example,
the streets of Genoa, and is also abundant in Geneva, so that
it is not exclusively Mediterranean. The pods are jointed
and are abundantly produced. We must also mention the
Judas tree, which often occurs as a shrub, its dull crimson
flowers, ' reddened with the betrayer "s blood/ forming sheets
of bloom on the hillsides near the railway between Naples and
Rome in spring, but it also in places grows to the size of
a large tree. In Lisbon, for example, it is extensively planted,
and travellers who, on their way to or from Geneva, have to
change trains at Culoz will notice a very fine specimen near
/ the railway station. The Judas tree is easily recognised by

its rounded, heart-shaped leaves, unusual in a member of the
peaflower family, and by the way the flowers seem to burst
from the bark of the twigs. The pods are not dissimilar to
those of the laburnum. Finally, we must note that as the
conifers are drought-resisting, the more dehcate forms are
very extensively planted in the region, one of the most
interesting being the Norfolk Island pine, a curious species
of Araucaria, which forms a noble tree of striking appearance,
and then presents httle resemblance to the pot plants common
in conservatories here.

Refeeences. Of the numerous books on the flora of the Medi-
terranean, relatively few are in the English language. Very useful
is Strasburger's book, translated as Rambles on the Riviera. It can
sometimes be picked up second-hand, and its illustrations are very



REFERENCES 97

helpful. Some of those given here are based in fact upon them.
More recent is Alban Voigt's Die Riviera in Junk\s Natur-Fiihrer,
an inexpensive and handy volume, giving many details in regard
to the commoner j)lants, native and cultivated. A general account
of Mediterranean vegetation will be found in Schimper's Plant
Geography. For the traveller in the region a general book on plants
is useful owing to the number of introduced trees and shrubs ;
the two volumes of a small old-fashioned book called The Treasury
of Botany, edited by Lindley and Moore, will be found of great value.
Much more modern but less complete is WiUis's Flowering Plants and
Ferns in the Cambridge Natural Science Manuals. A Flora is necessary,
and it is advisable to take Bcntham and Hooker's British Flora for
the numerous incidental notes on exotic plants, and the excellent tables
for identifjnng the common orders. Bonnier and Layens' Flore Com-
plete de la France, an inexpensive book, contains brief descriptions of
most of the Mediterranean plants.

Among other foreign books, mention may be made of Phihppson's
Das Mittelmeergebiet, with a general account of the region ; of Maxi-
miUen Sorre's Les Pyrenees Mediterraneennes, with excellent descrip-
tions of the vegetation of evergreen oak-woods ; and of Willkomm's
Orundziige der PJlanzenverbreitung auf der iberischen Halbinsel in
Engler und Drude's series called Die Vegetation der Erde. Many of
these give references to books suitable for further reading.



CHAPTER IX

MEADOW, WOOD, AND PASTURE IN THE ALPS

' Where woods and winds contend.'

In very sharp contrast to the plant formations of the Mediter-
ranean area are the woods and pastures of the Alps. Not
only are the kinds of plants present quite different, but the
Alpine formations have been on the whole far less altered
by man. It is also generally much easier to make a detailed
study of their constituent plants than of those round the
tideless sea, for they are for the most part above the level
where cultivation can be carried on, and the methods of soil
utihsation employed rarely interfere with free access on the
part of the general traveller.

A point of resemblance between the two types is that since
in both cases the plant formations closely reflect the characters
of climate and surface, both are associated with well-defined
types of human society. In not a few places, as on the Riviera,
at the eastern end of the Pyrenees, on the south side of the
main Alpine chain, especially to the east — the Mediterranean
and mountain plant formations approach one another closely,
and in these regions we have the contrast between two social
types at its sharpest. To a certain extent at least there is
even a contrast in race between mountain and Mediterranean
folk, and much of the history of the two regions is due to the
existence of a line of contact between two types of vegetation,
two modes of human life, two races of men, the hne of contact
stretching almost through the breadth of Europe in our
sense.



THE FIR- WOODS 99

Mountain vegetation, no less than that of the Mediterranean,
has been the object of innumerable investigations, the reasons
being in part the same in the two cases, for both are markedly
tourist regions. Indeed a complete list of pubhshed memoirs
would be even longer in the case of the Alps than in that of
the southern area, for the Alps and other mountains are
chiefly visited in the summer season, when even the busiest
have some leisure, and, for the energetic northern folk, they
are also within easier reach. The result is that both the
study of the region as a whole and that of special areas has
been carried to a high pitch, and many refinements of termin-
ology have been introduced. We shall hmit ourselves here
to a mere outhne of results, laying stress on those facts which
can be observed by the casual visitor to the Alps. Though
the description is based upon the Alps, it is generally apph-
cable to the other mountain regions of Europe. The special
characters of the different chains are beyond our scope.

We have already pointed out that in Switzerland deciduous
forests have a somewhat limited distribution, and the country
generally hes well to the east of the Atlantic, so that the
summer heat tends to be great (cf. p. 49). The result is that
most of the tourist resorts, except those on the lakes, he in
the belt of coniferous woods. The higher ones he often near
the upper margin of the woods, as for example Arolla, and,
we may add, the Riffelalp, though this is but a dependence
of Zermatt. More generally the village with its huge hotels
hes in a Httle basin, from which rise on all sides steep banks
with dark fir- woods. The result is that all the cUmbs and the
longer walks lead steeply up through the woods, and beyond
them to grassy shelves and slopes. Those who know the
Alps at all have only to shut their eyes to see again the steep
winding path, to feel the scent of the resinous firs and pines,
to catch glimpses of the great snow peaks through the clear-
ings in the wood, to hear the plashing stream, to picture the
rocks and undergrowth, the open spaces where the straw-



100 MEADOW, WOOD, AND PASTURE IN ALPS

berries grow, the brooding silence and mystery which to the
imaginative people the glades with a whole population of
nymphs and dryads, of fairy, fabulous monster and witch.
There are days too when the chill mist hes heavy in the
valley, and one chmbs painfully up the sUmy path, beneath
the steady drip of the tall trees, with the feeling of oppression
ever gro^ving deeper till the wood and the mist seem to thin
simultaneously, and one passes in a moment from the dank
gloom to the open, to see faint ghosts of mountains appearing.
A few steps more, and one is out upon the alp and into the
sunshine, surrounded by a sea of snow-clad peaks which
have no contact with base earth, but rise, hke saint or Madonna,
from the level sheet of cloud which conceals the whole valley
from view. Such an experience — and it is no infrequent one
— enables the traveller to appreciate to the full the contrast
between the two great plant formations of the Alps — the
coniferous wood and the alpine pasturage.

Often, as we have just said, the contrast between wood
and alp is sudden and striking. There is not only a change
in the vegetation but also in the slope and the nature of the
surface, and the fact that the alp has almost always a cluster
of cheese-making sheds or chalets, often, at least in Switzer-
land, accompanied by a httle inn, while the wood is without
sign of human hfe, accentuates the contrast. ' The place
where we had our lunch ' is always for the mountain traveller
an area of great significance, and if the geographer expresses
the matter in more stilted phrase, what he means funda-
mentally when he says that the forest repels settlement is
that the alp is a more suitable place to sleep or feed in than
the damp wood.

In other cases the contrast is less sharp (Plate X.). One
mounts through the wood and finds the tall firs and pines
giving way to prostrate mountain pine mingled with green
alder ; still higher this belt again perhaps yields to one where
the mountain pines are few, and great masses of alpine rhodo-



PLATE X




Near tlie tree limit on Mt. Revard. above Aix-les-Bains.
Tlie upper slopes form pastures, or alps.



ALPINE ROSE AND COLUMBINE 101

dcndron expose their bright flowers and rusty leaves. Or,
again, the trees separate from one another, and rise from a sea
of berry-bearing bushes, such as blaeberry or cowberry ; or, yet
again, the valley becomes rocky and difficult, and the vegeta-
tion is represented by scattered bushes and tall herbaceous
plants, such as the magnificent Pyrencan columbine, which
raises its beautiful blue flowers and luxuriant fern-hke leaves
at the side of the trickling streams, in company with rank-
growing composites, hke blue alpine lettuce and the pink
Adenostyles. In such cases, though the contrast between the
cUmb up the valley and the open alp at the top remains vivid,
the Umit of the wood is much less clearly defined. According
to many botanists, the upper Umit of the wood has in such
places been shifted downwards, either by human or natural
agency, or by both in combination, and the zone of bushes is
the equivalent of the Mediterranean maquis, that is, it repre-
sents a belt which has been once covered with trees, and
could possibly be again afforested. Again, that is to say, we
find that where trees are approaching their natural Umit very
little interference will turn the balance against them, but when
they disappear their accompanying undergrowth persists.

It is interesting to note that at the margin of the Alpine
wood, as in the Mediterranean region, the goat is a great
forest destroyer. In the Alps goats are kept in large numbers
as milk producers, and as the richer pastures are reserved
for the more valuable and more fastidious cows, the goats
must pick up a living where they may, and as they destroy
seedhngs and young conifers, as well as nibbling the bushes,
they serve to prevent natural regeneration. Nor are their
owners averse to extending, where they can, their pasturages
at the expense of the wood. Many investigators believe that
the presence of alpine rhododendron at a particular spot
means that forest was once present here.

The elevation at which tree growth ceases in the Alps has
been the subject of numerous investigations. It varies very



102 MEADOW, WOOD, AND PASTURE IN ALPS

greatly with exposure, the nature of the soil, the latitude,
and the nature of the mountain region considered, for isolated
mountains have a lower tree Hmit than those which occur in
groups. The subject need not detain us here, though it is
a point upon which it is always interesting to make observa-
tions when visiting the Alps. It will be noted then that in
the case of valleys running east and west the limit is very
different on the two sides. That side which faces south
should have a higher hmit than that facing north, but in
point of fact one often finds that the side with the southern
exposure is bare of trees, because it is sufficiently warm for
cultivation to be carried on at a great elevation, while the
other, colder side, is clothed with trees. The Romanche
valley, near the village of La Grave (Plates XI. and XII.), is a
very striking example, but the phenomenon is common in
both the Alps and the Pyrenees, and in many places the local
dialect contains two — quite untranslatable — words, of which
the one is apphed to the side of the valley facing the sun
which is cultivated, and has practically all the habitations
of the district, while the other is applied to the wooded,
uninhabited, uncultivated and chilly, shaded side. The land
on the two sides of the valley has, naturally enough, quite a
different economic value.

The number of lands of trees in the coniferous woods of
the Alps is small. The most widely distributed, especially
at the lower levels, is the spruce, whose heavy foliage and
hanging cones are familiar to all travellers in the region.
Our Scots pine, sometimes in a special variety {e.g. in the
Engadine), occurs, but rarely predominates, over large areas.
The larch is frequent towards the tree limit, and in parts of
Switzerland and in the eastern Alps the beautiful Cembran
or Arolla pine (see Frontispiece), with its edible seeds and
clustered needles, occurs. Where it is found it generally gives
rise to a wood-carving or furniture-making industry {e.g. in
the Grddnertal), as its soft wood is easily carved.



PLATE XI




The southward-facing slope of the Komanche valley near La Grave.
This slope has been completely deforested, and the consequent
deep ravining of tlio land is well shown. The soil is cultivated
where possible, and tlie presence of the villages should be noted.
The opposite slope, facing north, has practically no houses, and
is forest-clad.



BERRY-BEARING SHRUBS 103

A very interesting species is the prostrate mountain pine,
which is absent in most parts of Switzerland (though present
in the Engadine), but in the eastern Alps forms a zone
above the woods proper. It can grow upright as a forest
tree, and does this, for example, in the Pyrenees and parts
of the Alps, but the curious prostrate variety forms a dense
mass of interlacing branches, lying along the surface, and
thus resistant ahke to wind and snow, but forming an almost
insuperable barrier to human progress, as any one who has
scrambled down a steep slope clothed with the tree will
testify. Mingled with the prostrate pine, as already stated,
bushes of green alder occur, and both are of great importance
in preventing landsHps on very steep slopes, owing to the
way in which they bind the surface.

In the woods grow many interesting plants, especially the
berry-bearing shrubs common on moors in our own country.
Their fruit is but little used in Switzerland, or at least is rarely
found on hotel menus. In Tyrol, on the other hand, the
plant which we call cowberry yields the preisselbeere, which
appear so frequently in the form of compote as an accompani-
ment to many meat dishes. Such dishes recommend them-
selves strongly to persons of an economical temperament,
for the one order supphes both meat and pudding ! The
compote has the further recommendation that it is usually
composed of fresh fruit, whereas the others which make such
a noble show on the card in mountain inns generally turned
out to be parboiled bottled fruits, whose apparent variety
is more than counterbalanced by the fact that they all taste
exactly ahke, and this taste is chiefly negative — one feels
that a duster, if boiled long enough, would acquire a similar
nothingness.

Less famihar to us than the species of Vaccinum, hke cow-
berry and blaeberry, are the shrubby honeysuckles, of which
there are several lands, and their ally, the interesting httle
Linncea borealis. This is an inhabitant of Northern Europe,



104 MEADOW, WOOD, AND PASTURE IN ALPS

whose presence in a few localities in Scotland and northern
England and in parts of the Alps is a result of the Ice Age.
In Switzerland the plant is rare and local, and there is an
entertaining story of a royal personage with botanical tastes
who, in the course of an elaborate tour through the Alps,
proposed to conduct a personal search for the plant. Fortu-
nately, however, the major domo knew his duty, and the
plant was carefully inserted in advance in a spot where the
royal lady could find it without damage to garments or
temper. In the eastern Alps it seems to be not uncommon ;
not far from Solden in the Oetztal, for example, one may find
its slender traihng stems with their evergreen leaves making
a carpet through the fir-woods, and producing in July a
profusion of the dehcate pinkish-white twin bells, which
droop so that the pollen is not damaged by rain.

Junipers are also common in the woods, and, where the
canopy is more open, there are splendid patches of flowering
plants : the taller gentians, monkshood, mountain arnica,
hhes and orchids, the quaint Uttle wintergreens (Pyrola),
pink Saponaria and white Silenes, speedwells and many other
plants, some famihar and some strange, but not for the most
part showing any great contrast in form to our woodland
flowers.

Where the upper margin of the wood is fringed by a belt
of bush, many of the plants of our drier moors and heaths
reappear, with some strangers. Thus the two kinds of blae-
berry, cowberry, cranberry, bearberry, and so forth, are very
familiar ; the mountain azalea is not a very uncommon
plant of Scottish moors, but the two kinds of Alpine rose or
rhododendron and the abundance of the mezereon, bearing
its bright red berries in summer, are features novel to the
botanist from Great Britain. In the bush region, or in the
more open parts of the woods, we may find great sheets of
Dryas octopetala, another reHc of the Ice Age, not uncommon
in northern Scotland, and parts of Ireland and N. England,



PLATE XII




Another view in the Romanche Valley, near La Grave, showing
how the raviniiig due to deforestation is encroaching upon the
cultivated lands. Cf. Plate XL



ALPINE PASTUKES 105

as well as in Scandinavia. It is a small prostrate plant with
shining leaves, woolly beneath, white, rose-like flowers and
feathery fruits.

Let us turn next to the pasture lands, the real glory of
the Alps, but only seen in their splendour by the tourist
who can visit the region in early summer. Ruskin, true to
his Calvinistic upbringing, ascribed the fact that most
tourists visit the Alps in full summer, and so miss the glories
of the meadows, to original sin ; but most of those who have
their bread to earn find that it is due to causes beyond their
control. Those to whom an early visit is possible may wel-
come the following note as to dates, which is quoted from
Christ's PJkinzenleben der Schweiz :

' Mistakes are often made as to the time of culmination
of the flowering period in the Alps. In full summer it is only
the highest regions, those near the snow-line, which show
wholly unwithered sheets of bloom. June, close following
upon the time of the melting snow, is the blooming time of
the lower and even of the higher Alpine plants, and he who
has not looked upon this living carpet in the first freshness
of its youth, has no conception of the splendour and extent