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ALPINE FLOWER-FIELDS

“If you go to the open field, you shall always be in contact directly with the Nature. You hear how sweetly those innocent birds are singing. You see how beautifully those meadow-flowers are blossoming. … Everything you are observing there is pure and sacred. And you yourselves are unconsciously converted into purity by the Nature.”—YOSHIO MARKINO, My Idealed John Bulless.

Alpine Flower-fields; it is well that we should at once come to some understanding as to the term “Alpine” and what it is here intended to convey, otherwise it will be open to misinterpretation. Purists in the use of words will be nearer to our present meaning than they who have in mind the modern and general acceptation of the words “Alp” and “Alpine.” The authority of custom has confirmed these words in what, really, is faulty usage. “Alp” really means a mountain pasturage, and its original use, traceable for more than a thousand years, relates to any part of a mountain where the cattle can graze. It does not mean merely the snow-clad summit of some important mountain. Nor does “Alpine” mean that region of a mountain which is above the tree-limit.

The UPPER FIELDS of Champex early in June, with the Grand Combin in the distance.

Strictly, then, Alpine circumstance is circumstance surrounding the mountain pasturages, whether these latter be known popularly as Alpine or as sub-Alpine. To the popular mind—to-day to a great extent amongst even the Swiss themselves—Alpine heights at once suggest what Mr. E. F. Benson calls “white altitudes”; but that should not be the suggestion conveyed here. For present purposes it should be clearly understood that the term “Alpine pastures” is used in its old, embracive sense, and that sub-Alpine pastures are included and, indeed, predominate.

Of course, we may be obliged to bow occasionally to a custom that has so obliterated original meanings, or we shall risk becoming unintelligible; we may from time to time be obliged to use the word “sub-Alpine” for the lower sphere in Alpine circumstance (although, really and truly, the word should suggest circumstance removed from off the Alps—circumstance purely and simply of the plains). We shall therefore do well to accept the definition of “sub-Alpine” given by Dr. Percy Groom in the “General Introduction to Ball’s Alpine Guide,”—“the region of coniferous trees.” Yet, at the same time, it must be clearly understood that our use of the term “Alpine” embraces this sub-Alpine region.

It is absolutely necessary to start with this understanding, because, in talking here—or, for that matter, anywhere—of Alpine plants we shall be talking much of sub-Alpine plants. After all, our own gardens warrant this. Our Alpine rockeries are, in point of fact, very largely sub-Alpine with regard to the plants which find a place upon them. As laid down in the present writer’s “Alpine Flowers and Gardens,” it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw any definite line, even for the strictest of Alpine rock-gardening, between Alpines and sub-Alpines. The list would indeed be shorn and abbreviated which would exclude all subjects not found solely above the pine-limit. A ban would have to be placed upon the best of the Gentians, the two Astrantias, the Paradise and the Martagon Lily, to mention nothing of Campanulas, Pinks, Geraniums, Phyteumas, Saxifrages, Hieraciums, and a whole host of other precious and distinctive blossoms. It would never do; our rockworks would be robbed of their best and brightest. Therefore, because there is much that is Alpine in sub-Alpine vegetation (just as there is much that is sub-Alpine in Alpine vegetation) we must, at any rate for the purposes of this volume, adhere to the etymology of the word “Alpine,” and give the name without a murmur to the middle and lower mountain-fields, in precisely the same spirit in which we give the name to our mixed rockworks in England.

No need for us to travel higher than from 4,000 to 5,000 feet (and we may reasonably descend to some 3,000 or 2,500 feet). No need whatever to scramble to the high summer pastures on peak and col (6,000 to 7,000 feet), where abound “Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost”; where, around a pile of stones or signal, solitary Swallow-tail butterflies love to disport themselves; where the sturdy cowherd invokes in song his patron-saint, St. Wendelin; and where the pensive cattle browse and chew the cud for a brief and ideal spell. No need to seek, for instance, the rapid pastures around the summit of Mount Cray, or on the steep col between the Gummfluh and the Rubly, if we are at Château d’Oex; or to toil to the Col de Balme or to the “look-out” on the Arpille, if we are at the Col de la Forclaz; or to scale the Pas d’Encel or the Col de Coux, if we are at Champéry; or to clamber to the Croix de Javernaz, if we are at Les Plans; or to follow the hot way up to the Col de la Gueulaz, if we are at Finhaut; or to take train to the grazing-grounds on the summit of the Rochers de Naye, if we are at Caux or at Les Avants. We shall find all we desire—as at Randa, Zermatt, Binn, Bérisal, or Evolena—within a saunter of the hotels. Such fields as are above are, for the far greater part, used solely for grazing, and we must stay where most are reserved for hay. Here we shall find the particular flora we require, and shall be able to study it without let or hindrance from “the tooth of the goat” and cow. The only hindrance will be when those strict utilitarians, the haymakers, appear and change our colour-full Eden into a green and park-like domain, with here and there a neglected corner to remind us of what a rich prospect was ours—

“Till the shining scythes went far and wide

And cut it down to dry.”

Thus, we are to remain in a region comfortably accessible to the average easy-going visitor to the Alps—the region in which so well-found a place as Lac Champex is situated.

TROLLIUS EUROPÆUS, the Globe Flower, on the cloud-swept fields in early June.

And what a wondrous region it is, this which is of sufficient altitude for Nature to be thrown right out of what, in the plains, is her normal habit; where the Cherry-tree, if planted, blooms only about the middle of June; where the Eglantine is in full splendour in the middle of July and can be gathered well into August; where the blackbird is still piping at the end of July; where the wild Laburnum is in blossom in August; and where quantities of ripe fruit of the wild Currant, Raspberry, and Strawberry may be picked in September.

And Champex, too, what a favoured and beautiful place! I have chosen this particular spot as the “base of operations,” because of its variety in physical aspect, and, consequently, its variety in flowers. This plan I have deemed of more use than to wander from place to place, and I think that, on the whole, it will be fair to the Swiss Alpine field-flora. We can take note from time to time of what is not to be found here; for, of course, Champex does not possess all the varieties of Alpine field-flowers. Lilium croceum, Anemone alpina, Narcissus poeticus, and the Daffodil are, for instance, notable absentees. The soil is granitic rather than calcareous. Yet, taking all in all, the flora is wonderfully representative; and it certainly is exceptionally rich.

Situated upon what is really a broad, roomy col between the Catogne and that extreme western portion of the Mont Blanc massif containing the Aiguille du Tour and the Pointe d’Orny, Champex, with its sparkling lake and cluster of hotels and châlets, dominates to the south the valleys of Ferret and Entremont, and to the north the valley of the Dranse, thus offering rich, well-watered pasture-slopes of varied aspect and capacity. Whether it be upon the undulating pastures falling away to the Gorges du Durnand, or upon the steeper fields leading down to Praz-de-Fort and Orsières, 1,000 and 2,000 feet below; or whether it be upon the luxuriant, marshy meadows immediately around the lake, or upon the slightly higher, juicy grass-land of the wild and picturesque Val d’Arpette, there is an ever-changing and gorgeous luxury of colour which must be seen to be believed. “The world’s a-flower,” and a-flower without one single trace of sameness. Whichever way we walk, whichever way we gaze, the eye meets with some fresh combination of tints, some new and arresting congregation of field-flowers.

It is too much, perhaps, to say of any place that it is

“The only point where human bliss stands still,

And tastes the good without the fall to ill.”

But if such eulogy ever were permissible it would be so of Champex and her flower-strewn fields and slopes in May and June and early in July. In any case, we may unquestionably allow ourselves to quote further of Pope’s lines and say that, amid these fields, if anywhere, we are able to

“Grasp the whole world of reason, life, and sense,

In one close system of benevolence.”

Like Elizabeth of “German Garden” fame, we English love, and justly love, our “world of dandelions and delights.” We find our meadows transcend all others, and, in them—still like Elizabeth—we “forget the very existence of everything but … the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields.” But in this pride there is room, I feel sure, for welcome revelation. I can imagine few things that would more increase delight in a person familiar only with English meadows than to be suddenly set down among the fields of the Alps in either May, or June, or early July. What would he, or she, then feel about “the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields”? It would surely entail a very lively state of ecstasy.

And if only we had at home these grass-lands of Champex! Such hayfields in England would create a furore. Hourly excursions would be run to where they might be found. Lovers of the beautiful would be amazed, then overjoyed, and lost in admiration. Farmers, too, would likewise be amazed—then look askance and rave about “bad farming.” Undoubtedly there would be a war of interests. Upon which side would be the greater righteousness, it is not easy to decide; but presently we shall have occasion to look into the matter more closely. In the meantime, no particular daring is required to predict that, if these meadows came to our parks and gardens, they would come to stay.