Alpine

alpine snows

alpine plants

What are alpine plants? The word alpine is used to denote the plants that grow naturally on all high mountain-chains, whether they spring from hot tropical plains or from green northern pastures. Above the cultivated land these flowers begin to occur on the fringes of the stately woods; they are seen in multitudes in the vast pastures which clothe many great mountain-chains, enamelling their soft verdure; and also where neither grass nor loose herbage can exist; or where feeble world-heat is quenched and mountains are crumbled into ghastly slopes of shattered rock by the contending forces of heat and cold, even there, amid the glaciers, they spring from Nature's ruined battle-ground, as if the mother of earth-life had sent up her loveliest children to plead with the spirits of destruction. Alpine plants fringe the vast fields of snow and ice of the high mountains, and at great elevations have often scarcely time to flower and ripen a few seeds before they are again imbedded in the snow; […]

There can be little doubt that the autumn-flowering gentians are the elite of late-flowering alpines, but alas they can only be enjoyed by those gardeners with an acid soil, unless they can be grown in containers.