Flowers of the Fells

WILD ROCK-GARDENS.

To no one is the return of summer more welcome than to the botanist, and nowhere does he find so attractive a field for his pursuit as among the mountains. The love of flowers reveals a new and delightful aspect of the mountain life, and leads its votaries into steeps and wilds which, as they lie aloof from the usual ways of the climber, might otherwise escape notice.

It must be owned that our Cumbrian and Cambrian hills (for it is of the fells of the Lake district and Wales that I speak) are not rich in flowers as Switzerland is rich; one cannot here step out on the mountain-side and see great sheets of colour, as on some Alpine slope; and not only must we search for our treasures, but we must know where to search. They do not grow everywhere; much depends on the nature of the soil, much on the altitude, much on the configuration of the hills. There are great barren tracts which bear little but heather and bilberry; but there are rarer beds of volcanic ash and calcareous rock which are a joy to the heart of the flower-lover.

Again, one is apt to think that on those heights, where the winter is long and severe, it is the southern flanks that must be the haunt of the flowers; in reality, it is the north-east side that is the more favoured, owing to the fact that the hills, in both districts, for the most part rise gently from the south or the south-west, in gradual slopes that are usually dry and wind-swept, while northward and eastward they fall away steeply in broken and water-worn escarpments. It is here, among the wet ledges and rock-faces, constantly sprayed from the high cliffs above, where springs have their sources, that the right conditions of shade and moisture are attained; and here only can the “Alpines” be found in any abundance. The precipices of Cwm Idwal and Cwm Glas, in Wales, and in the Lake District the east face of Helvellyn, may stand as examples of such rock-gardens, the height of which, among these hills, varies from about 2,000 to 2,500 feet.

Flower-Gazing.

The course of a climber is usually along the top of the ridge, that of the botanist at its base; his paradise is that less frequented region which may be called the undercliff, where the “screes” begin to break away from the overhanging precipice, and where, in the angle thus formed, there is often a little track which winds along the hillside, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, but always with the cliff above and the scree-slope below. Following this natural guidance, he may scramble around the base of the rocks, or along their transverse ledges, and have enjoyment of the many mountain flowers that are within sight, if not within reach.

It is a fine sport, this flower-gazing; not only because all the plants are beautiful and many of them rare, but because it demands a certain skill to balance oneself on a steep declivity, while looking upward, through binoculars, at some attractive clump of purple saxifrage, or moss-campion, or thrift, or rose-root, or globe-flower, as the case may be. To the veteran rambler, especially, this flower-cult is congenial; for it supplies—I will not say an excuse for not going to the top—but a less severe and exacting diversion, which still takes him into the inmost solitudes of the mountain, and keeps him in unfailing touch with its character and genius; so that, like Wordsworth gazing on the daffodils, he finds his thoughts and memories enriched.

Some British “Alpines.”

When we compare the Welsh mountain flowers with those belonging to the Lakes, we find that the difference between the flora of the two districts is not, to the superficial view, very great, and that with a few exceptions the plants native on the one range may be looked for on the other. The saxifrages, of course, play an important part in both districts, the snow saxifrage (S. nivalis) being the rarest member of the family, and the beautiful star saxifrage (S. stellaris) the most common. The Lloydia, or spiderwort, that delicate lily of the high rocks, is found in Snowdonia only; and Wales can boast, if not a monopoly, at least a greater plenty of such favourites as the Welsh poppy, the moss campion (locally known as “Snowdon pink”), and the shapely little vernal sandwort, as charming as the moss saxifrages with which it grows. On the other hand, both the Alpine lady’s-mantle and the yellow saxifrage (S. aizoides), abundant in Cumberland, are lacking in Caernarvonshire, and this is somewhat of a loss, for the common lady’s-mantle is hardly so graceful as the Alpine, and the yellow saxifrages, as they hang from the rocks like a host of tiny golden shields, each with bright petals and pale green sepals radiating from a central boss, are one of the greatest ornaments of the fells. The lovely bird’s-eye primrose is another plant peculiar to the north country; against which may be set, perhaps, that gem of the wet mosses on not a few Welsh stream-sides, the diminutive ivy-leaved bell-flower. The gracefully drooping Alpine meadow-rue; the Alpine saussurea—a small spineless thistle, with a cluster of light purple and scented flower-heads—and various other mountain plants of more or less rarity, are to be found on the moist rocks of the steep “ghylls” and “cwms” in Lake-land and North Wales alike.

Knights of the Trowel.

Special mention, however, must be made of one beauty in which both districts can claim a share, though it flourishes at more than one or two botanical “stations”—the white mountain-avens, known among botanists and gardeners as Dryas Octopetala. Happy is the flower-gazer who has looked up at the galaxy, the “milky way,” of these fair mountain nymphs—for the plant is in truth an Oread rather than a Dryad—as they shed their lustre on certain favoured ledges in localities which it is wiser to leave unnamed.

For it must be said, in conclusion, that the practice of uprooting rare mountain flowers is becoming in Britain, as in Switzerland, a serious menace to what ought to be a national possession. In the seventeenth century a Welsh guide is said to have alleged “the fear of eagles” as a reason for not leading one of the earliest English tourists to the haunts of the Alpine plants. It is to be regretted that eagles are now as scarce as nurserymen are numerous.

“Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies.”

So sings the poet, and so acts the gardener. There is a writer of charming books about rock-gardening, who describes very feelingly the emotions with which, after discovering some rare mountain flower, he has half an hour of restful rapture—a sort of holy calm—before commencing operations with the trowel. There are many flower-fanciers who are much less circumspect and moderate. In a certain Yorkshire dale there is still a colony of blue spring gentian; and it was lately reported that “a gentleman,” who, accompanied by two gardeners, had arrived there in a motor, departed laden with a large consignment of these rare and beautiful flowers for transplantation to his private rockery. The nation which permits such a theft as this deserves to be “transplanted,” and such a botanist deserves to be himself transplanted to Botany Bay.