The Swiss Alps have their chief worshippers in the summer for the climbing, in the winter for the sports. A few insist that the rich colouring of autumn is the best season of all. A larger and a growing number visit the Alps in the spring for the flowers. They are wise, for truly the sight of an Alpine meadow in bloom is the most joyous manifestation of Nature in a sunny mood that man can know. Whether it be that the flowers, fertilised by the detritus which the winter's snow has brought to their roots, are really more luxuriant and brighter in colour than the same flowers in a garden or a woodland dell of the plains; or that the clear air and the contrast with the white snow around make them seem more brilliant—Alpine flowers shine out with an exquisite and star-like grace that can be noted nowhere else; and the green of Alpine grass seems of a clear brightness that no other herbage can rival.
The nearness to the snow has certainly an effect in enhancing the charm of these Alpine meadows. The flowers, wearing the colours of the sun, rush bravely to the very edge of the snow-fields as though they were jostling the winter aside. The white has barely disappeared before there is green and gold and red to give cheerful greeting to the spring sky, and declare another foot of territory won from the frost. Indeed, if you will look closely at the line of the retreating snow—not a straight line but a billowy one, here receding into a big bay, here stubbornly holding out a promontory of white—you will note that the crevellated edge of the vanishing snow mass is not joined to the earth at all, but forms a little overhanging cliff of ice. The melting warmth is coming up from the ground rather than from the sun in the last stage of the snow-field's flight, and underneath this tiny cliff the vegetation can be seen already pushing up to life.
The lower Alps in April and May flaunt first the gay banners of the crocus, which "breaks like fire" over the ground as soon as the chains of the ice are broken. But other flowers are but little in the rear, and the snow has scarce gone before under the pine woods there is a carpet of the mauve-blue hepatica, in the gorges the yellow and white of the snowflakes and the red of the sticky primrose, over the meadows the white and purple of the soldanella and the celestial blue of the spring gentian, while the marshes flaunt their marigolds and the rose-red bird's-eye primrose. It is a blaze of rich colour, and yet (to quote Mr. G. Flemwell's work on Alpine flowers):
The steel-blue of winter is still in the air—indeed, one feels it in the very flowers. Even though no snowy Alp be in sight, and nothing but floral gaiety around, there is yet a sense of austerity. The vegetation, though colourfull, is neither coarse nor rank, nor even luxurious, as judged by English standard. Nature is crisp and brisk; the air is thin and clear; everywhere is great refinement, quite other than that of spring in England. It were as though the severity of the struggle for existence could be read in the sweet face of things, just as we may often read it in the smiling face of some chastened human being—lines of sweetness running side by side with lines of acute capacity; a strong face beautiful; a face in which optimism reigns sovereign over an active pessimism. Nature in the Alps is instinct with the stern necessity for perpetual endeavour, whereas in England, where conditions are not so harsh, we have a sense of a certain indolence and ease of circumstance of Nature which we call homeliness and repose. Repose, in this sense, there certainly is not in the Alpine spring. Every suspicion of lassitude or laissez-faire is unknown; all is keen and buoyant, quick with an earnest joie de vivre which is as exquisite in its way as anything more voluptuously sentimental that England can produce.
Following fast upon the earlier flowers come the anemones, the rhododendrons, the ranunculi, the forget-me-nots, the Alpine roses, the saxifrages, the violets, the pinks, the heaths, the orchids, St. Bruno's lily, the daffodils, and a score of other blossoms. The feast of colour is spread, day after day, in varying shades, but with unvarying richness, until there comes the time when with another riot of colour the herdsmen enter into the field with their cattle, or the scythes lay all prostrate for the winter hay.
Whilst the best of the Alpine spring shows of flowers are in April and May on the lower and richer Alpine meadows, one may follow the banners of primavera up the mountains, almost until August, encountering on the higher levels later seasons. Writing from Zermatt as late as the end of July, a correspondent to the Morning Post chronicled:
HEPATICA IN THE WOODS AT BEX.
The dog roses, the brilliantly pink sweet briar, the willow herb, also of a præternatural brilliance owing to the altitude, still make gay the Zermatt Valley, while the last of the martagon lilies are being mown ruthlessly down by the peasants in their hayfields. Everywhere on the rocks the red house leeks and other plants of the stonecrop, saxifrage, and sedum varieties are appearing; while the mountain pinks, arnica, and Alpine asters grow almost down into the village itself. For some reason the flower-plunderer has either stayed his hand in this valley or has passed it by, for here several of the rarer and choicer sorts of Alpine blossoms, almost extinct, or at least very rare in most parts of Switzerland, are still flourishing. Martagon lilies, for instance, are common, though how long they will remain so I cannot say. The paths are often literally bordered with the true Alpine rose, deepest crimson in hue. Many a meadow is purple and gold with the starry flowers of the Alpine aster, common here as a field daisy; many a rock slope is overgrown with mountain pinks; while as for the arnica montana, the rhododendrons, and the creeping gypsophila, I have never seen anything like them elsewhere. The arnica covers whole slopes and carpets woods until the ground is oranged completely over with its blossoms; the creeping gypsophila clothes the bare rocks and borders the paths with its tufts of white and pale pink flowers; and the rhododendrons make the semi-shaded slopes beneath the larches almost a sheet of rosy-red. Somewhere, too, the true Alpine columbine must be growing plentifully. I have not discovered it, but I have, I am sorry to say, seen great handfuls of this loveliest of Alpine flowers being brought down from the Zermatt slopes.
At one altitude or another, indeed, there are few Alpine flowers which are not to be found somewhere in the Zermatt range during this month of July. Certain damp-loving species, such as campanulas and orchis and the whole primula family, are certainly less well represented here than in the rainier Bernese Oberland, yet still there are entire slopes pale blue with the bearded campanula, and more than one kind of primula is to be found still in bloom high up or in the crevices of rocks, while the slopes at the head of the Zermatt valley are even now covered with Alpine and sub-Alpine blossoms of a variety and brilliance which I have never seen excelled and seldom equalled. The short grass above eight thousand feet or thereabouts is blue with Alpine forget-me-nots or mauve with pansies, starred with the small gentian, or patched with the pink of the "marmot's bread" (silene); higher up, to 11,000 feet and more, ranunculus glacialis and the hardiest and lowest-growing flowers are still blooming; while slightly lower down, especially where there is the moisture of streams and the shelter of rocks, grow fields of arnica montana, pinks, asters, geums, rock roses, sweet alyssum, sedums, semper vivum, arabis, Alpine toadflax, louseworts, wild thyme, edelweiss, rampions, Alpine clovers in great variety, gypsophila, even stray orchis and primulæ, the dominant tones being orange and pale yellow, thrown into relief by the many mauves and the bright pinks and creamy whites.