Summer Flowers of the High Alps

Several species of Aconitum are met with in Switzerland. They have all bright-coloured flowers, especially adapted for fertilisation by humble-bees. It is only where there are humble-bees to convey the pollen from flower to flower that seeds can mature, so that where these insects do not exist the Aconites cannot spread. The five sepals of the Aconite flowers are coloured for attractive purposes, the highest being especially large and helmet-shaped. Protected by this are the representatives of the petals, so modified and reduced that they no longer have any attractive function, and are only of use to the plant by producing honey. They form a couple of nectaries on long stalks inside the helmet-shaped sepal.

The Common Monk’s-Hood is found in rich moist meadows between 3000 and 7000 feet. It seems to be especially common in the neighbourhood of Alpine dairies and cow houses. It flowers in June and July, and is very poisonous. From the conical root, resembling that of horseradish, the preparations of aconite used in medicine are prepared. When applied externally, aconite causes tingling and numbness and may relieve the pain of neuralgia. Internally, it depresses the action of the heart and lowers the temperature of the body. Homeopathists still use it for this purpose, but in doses so small as to have no appreciable action whatever. The single straight flower stalk, closely packed with blossoms, is rarely branched in its upper part, though small branches may be met with below.

The Panicled Monk’s-hood (Ac. paniculatum) resembles the above rather closely, but differs from it in the more open arrangement of the flowers on the hairy flower stalk, which is usually branched near the top. The leaves of both plants are finely divided, but the sub-divisions of those of the common Monk’s-hood are longer and narrower, more strap-shaped in fact, than those of the panicled form.