The PARADISE LILY (Paradisia Liliastrum) near the Glacier de Trient about the middle of June.
If we wanted to give this Gentian an English name (and far be it from me to suggest that we should do any such thing) we should probably have to call it Spring-Felwort; Felwort being an old-time title for Gentiana amarella, an annual herb common to dry pastures and chalk downs in England, and possibly at one time employed by tanners. In the Jura Mountains verna goes by the name of Œil-de-chat, and among the peasants inhabiting the northern side of the Dent du Midi, in the Canton de Valais, I have heard it referred to as Le Bas du Bon Dieu; but, considering the remarkably suggestive character of the plant, the domain of folk-lore seems curiously empty of its presence. This, possibly, is in part due to its amazing abundance, and to the fact that it is to be found from about 1,200 feet to about 10,000 feet, thus causing it to meet with the proverbial fate of things familiar. But, at any rate, its dried flowers, mixed with those of the Rhododendron and the purple Viola, are used in the form of “tea” by the montagnards as an antidote for chills and rheumatism.
The appearance of verna upon the pastures is not confined solely to the early springtime; though this is the season of its greatest wealth, it may be met with quite commonly in the late autumn. Indeed it affects the days which circle round the whole of winter; and I have found it several times even at Christmas near Arveyes, above Gryon (Vaud), upon steep southward-facing banks where sun and wind combined to chase away the snow. If, then, for no other reason than this, it seems curious that romance has not gathered this Gentian under its wing as it has the Edelweiss.
As for the radiant purity of its five-pointed azure stars, it is perhaps only outshone by that of the Myosotis-like flowers of Eritrichium nanum, King of the Alps; but even this rivalry is doubtful when verna is growing upon a limestone soil, where its blossoms are more brilliant than those produced upon granitic ground.
Blue, however, although it is the superabundant type-colour, is not the invariable hue of its blossoms; indeed, it shows more variety than even many a botanist suspects, and I have found it in all tints from deep French to pale Cambridge blue, from rich red-purple to the palest lilac, and from the faintest yellow-white, through blush-white, to the purest blue-white. I have, too, found it party-coloured, blue-and-white.
These many variations from the type give occasion for suggestive questions that I fain would indicate, because I believe with Mr. Arber that such variations can only “arise from deep-seated tendencies, which find their expression in the existence of the individual, and the evolution of the race.” For instance, are the mauve and plum-coloured flowers a break-back to the ancestral type; that is to say, was the more primitive verna red? Blue flowers are more highly organised than those of other colours; are, then, all flowers striving to be blue—like Emerson’s grass, “striving to be man?” The French-blue Gentians are of warmer tint than those of Cambridge hue; are they, therefore, the first decided step into this highest of the primary colours: are they the first strikingly victorious effort of the plant to shake off all trammel of red? And white; what of white? I have seen white verna tinged with rose, and white verna of a white altogether free from any tint of grossness—a white so positive as to suggest the utmost frailty arising from degeneracy, if it were not known to be the natural consequence of persistent advance through blue. These are nice points for speculation.
But “let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause”! Blue for us is the essential colour for this Gentian: we can dispense with all its efforts to be white. Blue, not white, is the hue of promise. And it is promise we look for at the turn of the year; it is promise we must have after long months of snow. When youthful “chevalier Printemps” hymns us his ancient message; when in penetrating accents of triumph he tells us:
“C’est moi que Dieu sur terre envoie
Dans un rayon de son soleil