Summer Flowers of the High Alps

Many varieties of Anemone are found in Switzerland. Not only have we the common English Wood Anemone (A. nemorosa) of the early spring, and the much rarer Pasque Flower (A. Pulsatilla) of our downs, but there is also the white or yellow Alpine Anemone (A. alpina), which forms so marked a feature of the Alpine pastures in early summer. Even in July and August, when most of the flowers have faded, the feathery tufts of seeds of the Alpine Anemone are still to be seen as the so-called “Chamois’ beards.”

The Narcissus-flowered Anemone, here photographed, is a widely distributed plant. It occurs on grassy slopes and in pastures between 4000 and 7000 feet above the sea level, and seems to prefer a limestone soil. The finely divided leaves are well seen in the photograph. Unlike every other species of Anemone found in Switzerland the flower stalk bears not a single flower only but two to eight, or even more, and at the point where the flower stalk divides a green collaret or involucre is seen. The flowers are pure white inside, and their external surfaces are often slightly woolly and tinged with pink, especially in the bud. The seeds have no feathery appendages like those of the Alpine Anemone. The flowers are without honey. They are visited by pollen-collecting insects, and should these fail will become self-fertilised. The plant blooms in May and June, and some flowers may still be found even in July in the highest Alpine pastures. It is met with widely distributed over Central Europe, North America and Northern Asia, but is absent in Scandinavia. On account of the numerous closely allied species which are found in Northern Asia, it is thought that this plant may have originated in that region and then spread east and west to America and Europe respectively.