It has been pointed out that the principal characteristic of the vegetation of the Arctic Regions is the predominance of perennial and cryptogamous plants; but further southward, where night begins to alternate with day, or in what may be called the sub-arctic zone, a difference of species appears which greatly enhances the beauty of the landscape. A rich and vividly-coloured flora adorns these latitudes in Europe as well as in Asia during their brief but ardent summer, with its intense radiance and intense warmth,—consisting of potentillas, gentians, starry chick-weeds, spreading saxifrages and sedums, spiræas, drabas, artemisias, and the like. The power of the sun is so great, and the consequent rapidity of growth so extraordinary, that these plants spring up, and blossom, and germinate, and perish in six weeks. In a lower latitude many ligneous plants are found,—as berry-bearing shrubs, the glaucous kalmia, the trailing azalea, the full-blossomed rhododendron. The Siberian flora differs from the European in the same latitudes by the inclusion of the North American genera, phlox, mitella, and claytonia, and by the luxuriance of its asters, spiræas, milk-vetches, and the saline plants goosefoot and saltwort.
In Novaia Zemlaia and other northern regions the vegetation is so stunted that it barely covers the ground, but a much greater variety of minute plants of considerable beauty are aggregated there in a limited space than in the Alpine climes of Europe where the same genera occur. This is due to the feebleness of the vegetation; for in the Swiss Alps the same plant frequently usurps a large area, and drives out every other,—as the dark blue gentian, the violet-tinted pansy, and the yellow and pink stone-crops. But in the far north, where vitality is weak and the seeds do not ripen, thirty different species, it has been observed, may be seen “crowded together in a brilliant mass,” no one being powerful enough to overcome its companions. In these frozen climates plants may be said to live between the air and the earth, for they scarcely raise their heads above the soil, and their roots, unable to penetrate it, creep along the surface. All the woody plants—as the betula nava, the reticulated willow, andromeda tetragona, with a few bacciferous shrubs—trail upon the ground, and never rise more than an inch or two above it. The Salix lanata, the giant of the Arctic forests, is about five inches in height; while its stem, ten or twelve feet long, lies hidden among the moss, and owes shelter, almost life, to its humble neighbour.
From Novaia Zemlaia we pass to Spitzbergen, whose flora contains about ninety-three species of flowering or phænogamous plants, which, like those already mentioned, generally grow in tufts or patches, as if for the sake of mutual protection. The delicate mosses which clothe the moist lowlands, and the hardy lichens which incrust the rocks up to the remotest limits of vegetation, are very numerous. Some of the Spitzbergen plants are found on the Alps, at elevations varying from 9000 to 10,000 feet above the sea-level; such as the Arenaria biflora, the Cerastium alpinum, and the Ranunculus glacialis. The only esculent plant is the Cochlearia fenestrata, which here loses its bitter principles, so much complained of by our Arctic explorers, and may be eaten as a salad. Iceland moss and several grasses afford sustenance for the reindeer.
A very different description is given of Kamtschatka, to which we are once more brought in the course of our rapid survey. Its climate is much more temperate and uniform than that of Siberia, and as the air is humid, the herbaceous vegetation is extraordinarily luxuriant. Not only along the banks of the rivers and lakes, but in the avenues and copses of the woodlands, the grass attains a height of fully twelve feet, while the size of some of the compositæ and umbelliferæ is really colossal. For example, the Heraclium dulce and the Senecio cannabifolius frequently grow so tall as to overtop a rider upon horseback. The pasturage is so rich that the grass generally yields three crops every summer. A species of lily, the dark purple Fritallaria sarrana, is very abundant, and the inhabitants use its tubers instead of bread and meal. If the fruits of the bread-fruit tree are pre-eminent among all others, as affording man a perfect substitute for bread, the roots of the sarrana, which are very similar in taste, rank perhaps immediately after them. The collection of these tubers in the meadows is an important summer occupation of the women, and one which is rather troublesome, as the plant never grows gregariously, so that each root has to be dug out separately with a knife. Fortunately the work of gathering the tubers is much lightened by the activity of the Siberian field-vole, which excavates an ample burrow, and stores it for winter provision with a large supply of roots, chiefly those of the sarrana.
To sum up:—
What may be called the Arctic climate extends over nearly the whole of Danish America, the newly-acquired possessions of the United States, the original Hudson Bay Territory, and Labrador, down to that unimportant watershed which separates from the tributaries of Hudson Bay the three great basins of the St. Lawrence, the five great lakes, and the Mississippi. This line of watershed undulates between the 52nd and 49th parallels of latitude, from Belle Isle Strait to the sources of the Saskatchewan, in the Rocky Mountains, where it inflects towards the Pacific Ocean, skirting on the north the basin of the Columbia.