Fiori della Liguria (F. Lees)

Luigi Speranza
Bordighera

Neither the Antiquary nor myself are in the strict sense
of the word botanists, but we are not without an eye for
the beauties of the flowers of the field, and the instinct or
intelligence to discriminate between what is patent and
what is curious in plant life. It would, therefore, have been
strange had we resisted the temptation to collect, by the
wayside, specimens of the flora of Liguria. These, when
we could not identify them by the aid of the works of
Mr. Clarence Bicknell, of Bordighera, I periodically sent
to England to my Father, Dr. F. Arnold Lees, F.L.S.,
the author of The Flora of West Yorkshire and other
botanical works. The many letters which we received in
acknowledgment (letters often enthusiastic and clearly
denoting that our 150 " finds " had given the intensest joy)
have suggested to me the advisability of setting down the
following notes on the principal species interesting to the
non -botanist or noteworthy for ecological reasons. Those
who follow in our footsteps on the Italian Riviera will,
I trust, derive some pleasure and not a little knowledge
of Nature by perusing this partial Flora Ligurica, which
is arranged in its natural order, beginning with the spring
Anemones, and ending with the Horsetails, the most ancient
type of existing vegetation.

The Star Anemone (Anemone stellata, Lamk.), with its
magenta or puce, and occasionally white blossom, is rare
in Liguria, and only among the Canes (Arundo donax)
westwardly at Bordighera and San Remo. But it becomes
commoner eastwardly, and is fairly plentiful at the top of
the Righi funicular at Genoa, where our specimen was
gathered.

Helleborus foetidus, L. the Foetid Hellebore, not the
Classic one was also found above Genoa, high in the hills,
at Torriglia, in the month of March. Its fan-fingered
leaves and green drooping flowers, tipped with maroon red,
make it a notable herb in the thickets and torrent beds
throughout Liguria.

Fumaria capreolata, L., resembling a cloud of smoke, was
discovered on the road leading from Spezzia to Porto venere,
in May. It is a herb of singular aspect not a rare one,
but always noticed by the most perfunctory of wayfarers.

Cochlearia saxatilis, R.Br., a rare Alpine plant like a
hoary Alyssum, with silver seed-pouches Honesty in
diminutive, and with neat white flower-spikes, was found
in the morainic torrent bed at Albenga in October. Accord-
ing to Mr. Bicknell's Flora of Bordighera, it is very rare
on the highest rocks of Monte Toraggio. In the station
where our specimen was collected it was a " wash-down,"
brought as seed, or torn rootstock from its natural home
on the higher mountain scarps, but it is of interest as
emphasising one of the ways of adventitious dispersal of
plants and the fact that change to a mild climate from a
rigorous one is not inimical to an Alpine. It would be a
bad thing for the lowlanders' " rock garden " if it were.
" High Life " in plants is maugre rigour in air and connotes
the select less competition with the mob, more burly
yet more tender, a paradox in herb life !

Silene quinquevulnera , L., grows in certain hot sandy
places at Spezzia. Legend connects the five blood -like
stigmata on the petals (one on each) of this common
weedling with the five wounds of the Crucifixion.

Lychnis Flos-cuculi, L., the Cuckoo-flower, or Ragged
Robin, likewise came from the Spezzia district a marshy
place east of the town known as gli Stagnoni.

In the neighbourhood of Albenga both Reseda Phyteuma,
L., and Reseda saxatilis, Pourr., were gathered. " The
former," writes my Father, " is perhaps the origin (with
another Spanish species) of the sweet-smelling Mignonette
of gardens. Like wheat, the wild plant is said to be
unknown, but as the species of the family ' cross,' and Reseda
Phyteuma has occasionally a slight perfume, when grown
on rich soil or upon heaps of pozzuoli (sea-wrack) on the
littoral, that most ozonic or sea-breezy of flower-scents may
quite understandably have so initiated. Horticulturists
have had in the past too much of careless unreason in their
experiments to help us to the How and Why."

Saponaria ocymoides, L., a Soapwort, grows in many of
the torrent beds of Liguria.

Gypsophila repens, L., the lime-loving White Pink, was
found in several districts.

Tunica saxifraga, Scop., the Stone-breaking Pink, was
discovered to have taken firm hold in the stony torrent bed
at Albenga. It makes a moss-leaf cushion from which
spring dozens of branching miniature trees bearing neat
full purple pink star bloom. The roots are dispropor-
tionately stout, strong and long, enabling the plant to retain
its hold on the most disturbed coigns of vantage, and by
the insinuation of its wire roots into every niche or crack
of the rock succeeds, in time, and with the aid of water,
in fissuring and cleaving it.

Epilobium rosmarim folium, Haenke, Rosemary -leaved
Willowherb, was in the same torrent bed at Albenga. This
is another pretty wandy purple-flowered " wash down "
from the sub-alpine slopes of talus and scree in the
mountains. It is a moraine lover.

Dianthus furcatus, Balbis (D. tener, Ard.) is a third
" wash down " of the Albenga district. It is a rather
rare forked-stem Pink.

Dianthus Seguieri, Chaix, the Cluster Pink and a near
relative of our Sweet William, was also found.

All these, as most of the Pink tribe, are mountaineers by
breeding, liking best barren, rough ground.

Cistus salvifolius, L., the Sageleaved Gum Rockrose,
grows at Genoa and on gravelly banks at Spezzia. This
was the only one of the three species which occur in Liguria
which we had the opportunity of gathering.

Only the rosy, larger yellow flowered and typical forms
of Helianthemum vulgare, the herbaceous Rockrose, were
gathered, the white-flowered and silky-leaved species
(polifolium and italicum) not being seen.

Of the Poly gala order of the Laitier or Litania Milkworts
there are five in Liguria. Two were found over and over
again : the pink-flowered Poly gala rosea, Gren et Godron,
and the hirsute P. pubescens, Burnat, with blue flowers.
The intensely blue-bloomed P. vulgaris, L. was also
seen.

One Geranium only, the lime-rock or sea-sand loving
(because of the comminuted shell lime in the sand) Geranium
sanguineum, with inch-across crimson flowers, was found.

At Torriglia, in the mountains above Genoa, the Stork's-
bill, Et -odium cicutarium, L'Herit, was found at 2,000 feet.
Mr. Bicknell gives 1,500 metres as its upward limit.

Naturalised all along the Riviera proof of its amenity
of climate the three-leaved Sorrel-Shamrock, Oxalis
cernua or libyca, with fine yellow flowers, was noted from
San Remo eastwardly. It is a native of South Africa
and there flowers in the winter of the Tropics (July), but
in Liguria from March to May, being " a remarkable
instance of a plant having undergone a complete change
of season of blooming " (Henslow). In a way, however,
Oxalis cernua is one of the Sensitive plants, and the March
to May calenture of the Riviera is the Tropic winter a little
before its time. Needing a certain (not well known)
temperature for the maturation of its reproductive elements
(not too hot clearly, as clearly not below 45 F. its minimum
growing point) it blooms simply at the right season, dis-
regarding the arbitrary Kalendaric divisions. It keeps to
its individual need-and-seed time, just as does the well-
known pink-flowered Almond of Persia, which, planted
in our English park-lands, will insist on blossoming in
March (its kalend in the East), even though snow is on the
ground.

Tribulus terrestris, L., the Caltrops, so called because
of its spiky horns of fruit of the Bean-caper order, and the
Caper plant (Capparis spinosa), not indigenous but estab-
lished as well as cultivated, were both among the species
gathered ; whilst at Vernazza, near Spezzia, the curious
disk-like leaved, turreted-flowered Umbilicus pendulinus,
De Cand., adorned walls with its fleshy rosettes and
spires.

The Rose order was poorly represented in our consign-
ments. Among those sent were three Cinquefoils, Potcntilla
verna, P. argentea and P. erecta, with the small-flowered
Barren Strawberry, P. micrantha, Ram., from Torriglia,
at 2,000 feet elevation.

But the great Pea flower tribe, the legumes, were well
illustrated. The Laburnum in one form, the upright
Cytisus sessilifolius , was seen near San Remo, the common
' Gold-Rain ' in many places ; with, near Spezzia, the Italian
form of the Plantagenet Genista pilosa, var diffusa, Willd.,
peculiar in having triangular twigs like a Sedge and leaves
with a (protective ?) cartilaginous border.

The trefoils our Clovers were represented by the silky
hare's-footed T. arvense (Albenga) ; the pinky T.incarnatum,
T. stellatum and the hop-clover T. agrarium. The Lotus
pea flower was represented by L. decumbens, Poiret, and our
English -turf L. corniculatus . The two most singular
plants of this tribe gathered were the lens-fruited Medick,
M. orbicularis, All., the circular, flat, half-inch pods being
made up of a three to five turned spiral lying curled flat
one turn above another, with a green membranous border
spineless but veined over with net-like ridges, similar to
those on the back of an aged hand ; and the Blue Pitch
Clover, " Forfoglia," in vulgo italiano. The former was
gathered on the heights at Sarzana ; the latter at Porto-
venere, near Spezzia. Blue Pitch Clover has blue-violet
heads of bloom on long stalks surpassing the stalked tri-foil ;
its science name is Psoralea bituminosa,so called by Linnaeus
because the odour exhaled when the plant is bruised strongly
suggests a mixture of pitch and liquorice. Whether it is
eaten or refused by sheep or goats one would like to know,
but, unaware of its rustic Italian name at the time of gather-
ing, inquiry was not made. Mr. Bicknell says nothing on
the subject in his Flora of Bordighera, although he does
mention the fact of bruise-smell in his earlier and finely
illustrated Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Riviera and
Neighbouring Mountains. 1

Near Spezzia, too, we got the small-flowered Indian
Melilot, well naturalised now in the west of Europe, and
even in England by roadsides holding its own. This is
one of the species which corroborates the fact of slow but
sure change of flora in almost every area ; as one species
naturally dies out, some other, from some " far. Cathay "
of plant-land, comes, by favour of merchandise or natural
aeroplane of seed, and takes its place.

Of the tare and "fitch" families two only were observed
and gathered, probably because cultivated fields were not
much trespassed upon by us. These two were the Fod-
der Vetch, V. saliva, and the Cicerchia porporino, or
Mouchi of the Italian (Linnaeus' Lathyrus Clymenum) the
Honeysuckle Vetchling.

The spring-blooming Orobus niger, L., was also gathered,
near Pigna, and is interesting because (though turning
from green to a dull black in drying) it grows in our own
classic mountain glen, the Pass of Killiecrankie.

The Pomegranate (Punica granatuum), poorest of edibles
perhaps, but loveliest of fruit forms, was, of course, observed
and admired here and there on rocky banks and along
the torrents, but it was not practicable to dessicate speci-
mens for the herbarium. It is almost certainly from a hotter
latitude and not indigenous even on this favoured littoral ;
and the same, but with less emphasis, may be said of the
(1 Trubner & Co., 1885)
classic and decorative Oleander, most distinctive of green
growths as regard form and flower, a Rose offering on an
Olive branch !

Continuing our enumeration of some of the salient fea-
tures of the vegetation of Liguria apart from the arbor-
escent and evergreen class which, from Privet, " Rovere,"
pubescent Oak, flowering Manna Ash, Bruyere or Tree
Heath to Strawberry Tree, Chestnut, Ilex oak, " Buss "
or Box, Hornbeam oak (Ostrya), Alder, various Pines, the
Cedar Juniper, the White Beam tree, and the noble Laurus
or Sweet Bay, " Lauribaga " in popular speech, Wayfaring-
tree, tree Woodbine, red-berried Elder (Sambucus race-
mosus) Sloe, Cherry, Hawthorn, and the Amelanchier pear,
constitute in varying degrees the woodland and thickets
from the mountains to the headlands of the seaboard
some special singularity led to the gathering of the wing-
stemmed purple Loosestrife, in a damp place near Spezzia
Ly thrum Graefferi of Tenore, the Naples' systematist,
cousin-german in plants to Shakespeare's " Long Purples
of the Date."

Campanula macrorrhiza, Gay, a lovely serrate-heart-
leaved plant with thick white woody roots and large open
bell-bloom with a long protruding clapper-like style, seems,
along with C. isophylla (Moretti), special to the Riviera di
Ponente. It grows under, and hanging from rocks on the
hills above Albenga ; and Mr. Bicknell says " more abun-
dantly inland to a distance of five miles behind Finalmarina,
still in bloom at Christmas."

From the same district came the Campanula Sabatia,
De Notaris, another Harebell, recalling the Bluebell of
Scotland, but with drooping flower bud, incurved sepals,
and differing habit. It is represented by Fig. B, Plate 36,
of Mr. Bicknell's Flowering Plants and Ferns of the
Riviera.

One of the three Heathers attracted notice and was
gathered because of its departure from heathery ways in
a singular direction. The tip of the needle-leaved shoots
develop an abortive globular tip on which, through arrest
of stem-growth, broad boat-shaped hair-clothed leaves
crowd, one laid closely over another. This is Erica scoparia,
the Besom-heath in the vulgar.

On stony banks, brushwood, in the Finalborgo area, we
gathered the singular European Plumbago, so called because
of its clear prussian-blue or dark lead-coloured tube flowers.
It is a cousin-german of the P. Capensis of English green-
houses, held in such firm estimation by reason of its pale
turquoise to lavender flowers born in bottlebrush spikes,
each stalked flower springing from a sundew-gland-like
calix.

Near Albenga the Dyers' Woodruffe (Asperula tinctoria)
was gathered. The roots are used to dye wool a red colour.
Asp. arvensis was likewise noted.

Both Scabious were found 5. maritima and S. candicans ;
as well as the Red Beadstraw, Galium rubrum.

Of the great order of Asters (composite, as called by
botanists, from their many flowers gathered into one
head, the central ones usually yellow, the outer rows white,
though there are many exceptions, a few, like the Chicory,
being even bright blue) only a few were gathered for
preservation. Mostly coarse and bulky, these plants do
not lend themselves conveniently to pressing and drying
by those who are upon the road. The principal ones were
the yellow Shore Daisy, Chrysanthemum Myconis, Mar-
guerite-like but all yellow ; the field Wormwood Artemisia
campestris, and, at Torriglia, in the torrent bed, the familiar
British Coltsfoot, and rhubarb-leaved Butter-bur, which
has, since the landscape painter first set up his easel on a
river's bank, made a fine, foil foreground for more pictures
than any other single thing of green life. The yellow scaled,
narrow-leaved Everlasting, Helichrysum Stoechas, also
was noted on calcareous rocks at Albenga ; but the Edel-
weiss, called Stella d' Italia, which, though associated mostly
with Swiss legend, is " extremely abundant, in masses, on
the higher slopes of the Maritime Alps " (Bicknell), was
not attained to under the special circumstances of our
peregrination.

The next floral notable, gathered oftener than once
between Albenga and Genoa, is the Blue Globe Daisy, in
connection with which there are two economic and ecologic
facts of interest. The bush Globularia has leaves which are
senna-like and mildly aperient and much used to adulte-
rate those of the well-known " Black draught " of the
" liverish." The smaller form, vulgaris, is very common in
gravelly, grassy places, spangling the ground from Novem-
ber to May with its blue " pompom " asterine capitula.
But both are specially adapted for fertilization by butter-
flies (Muller) and the species (three in all) are the only
instances in the Germanic and Italian-Swiss floras " of a
blue colour having been produced by the selective agency
of Lepidoptera."

Travelling now a good way on the avenues of botanic
classification, the curious leafless Broomrape " minor "
or " major " 'tis hard to say with such a mummy as our
example of the Orobanche family became was collected
on marshy, grassy ground outside Spezzia.

The Snapdragon order yielded the Moth Mullein, the Ivy-
leaf Toadflax, and, in turf on arid hills, the pretty and
distinctive Odontites lutea, yellow awl-leaved Eyebright ;
whilst the Genoa neighbourhood in spring gave us Barre-
lier's Veronica, True Image, with flower " eyes " of pale
blue, and Torriglia, at some 2,000 feet, the Comb Eyebright,
Euphrasia pectinata, Tenore, and Jordan's majalis.

In sandy, grassy places near Spezzia the two grass-root
parasites, the Great Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus major] and
the gland -sticky Trixago viscosa, alike abundant in colonies
on the littoral in the Riviera and the sand dunes of
Lancashire and Cornwall, were gathered.

The White Henbane, Hyoscyamus albus, was found on
the sands of pathetic, deserted Bussana Vecchia. It is a
plant of no great beauty, but has a curiously-lidded box
fruit. In botanic parlance the seed receptacle is a buxus ;
it, and the black Nightshade of the same Sodomean order
being called vulgo " Morella."

Of the Convolvulus tribe, two only were gathered : the
Cantabrian and the mallow-leaved C. altheeoides, L. They
have pretty frail trumpet blooms, but are ephemeral like
other Morning Glorys.
At San Remo the bee-beloved Borage, with its harsh,
repellent leaves and invitingly-open eye-blooms, was in
evidence ; whilst its relation, the bulbose Comfrey (Sym-
phytum), attracted one's notice at Nervi, and, deepest of
violet-eyed flowers, the Stoneseed (Lithospermum purpureo-
cceruleum) was noted in bushy places and under the olives
in many of the more calcareous mountain spurs and fangs
which form the successive headlands of the littoral. This
plant has a curious and protective trick at its command.
It grows in tufts, in shade or on open banks, the stems which
flower successfully leaving behind them a polished porcelain
nut ready to be jerked off into some adjacent niche where it
may germinate and renew its life ; while those other leafy
stems the majority which cannot, for lack of time,
attain to blossom, lengthen out and, bending over until
their tips touch earth, at once take root there, literally
striding away two feet or more to establish a nidus of
independent life. This curious progression, to the end of
preservation of existence, is well-nigh unique among
European herbs, and yet was never adequately described
until Dr. Frederic N. Williams (of Brentford) reached its
class in his " Prodromus " of the British Flora, a work
not yet completed.

The odoriferous species of the Mint order, herbs or shrubs,
of Liguria are best described as legion. From English
Wild Thyme to other Thymes, many gatherings were made
to please eye and nose. Bee-worshipped and antiseptic,
their outlines and hues are as varied as their virtues ; with-
out undue assertiveness as individuals, though strikingly
pretty in some cases, on the dry, bushy hill-sides of Liguria,
" bee-haunted " as ever our own Furness fells, their preci-
sion of qualities in mass dominates the scene. There is the
fruticose Calamint, holding up, as with fingers, little candles
of its own on the hillside of Toirano, below the shrine of
St. Lucia. There is the even more rococo Lavandula
staechas, Spike Lavender, with tongues of violet hanging
from between the toothed lips of its flower-mouth, hoary
gray of foliage sweetening the air on the marble brows of
Spezzia. Two Herb Bugles (reptans and Iva) blow, one
or the other from April into late October, in suitable sites
on the ground they love ; and the maculated Dead Nettle,
with a pale yellow stripe down every heart-shaped leaf
(as though the sap-green had run short) occurs, more rarely,
on damp banks at Calizzano, Torriglia, etc. 1

Satureja montana, the shrubby Savory, makes sweet
even the torrent beds, wherein it blooms on its wiry wands
into late October.

And of Sage plants the noble Salvia pratensis spires in
the purple and green of its helmet-capped blossom from
out a heat tuft of hearty leaves in the grassy places it
affects. The pink-lipped Salvia canaviensis even, on the
Promenade at Sestri Levante, hung out one or two late
blossoms well into December.

Two Hemp Nettles, Stachys recta and maritima, not so
beneficently aromatic as the rest, occurred at Spezzia
and Albenga.

Of the Asclepiadeae Milkweed which have their
greatest development and variation in the western hemi-
sphere, only one, and that not truly native, Periploca
graeca, was observed on the public promenade at Nervi.

Of the decorative and distinctive herb Spurges, well
developed (there are over 30 different growths) along the
Riviera and Ligurian coast, the tree form, the only European
one growing to any size, was observed on barren slopes
from Finalmarina eastward, and the more familiar (in
English borders) Welcome Husband Home in many places
throughout the bee-land.

Near Spezzia we also gathered the Erba lazza or Com eta
(Ital. vulgo), a Spurge with softly hairy testicle-like fruit,
and horned purple-red glands ringing the green ruffed
blossom ; a singular plant in physiognomy, nodding
modestly in its youth, proudly displaying its umbrella-rib
flower-stalks in its maturity, inviting the worship of many

1 The green (chlorophyll) of leaves is developed under the invisible
wand of Sunlight, Palinurus the harlequin of the world's stage ; and
this " dead-nettle " being partial to shade one may, not too fancifully,
guess that the lack-green line bordering each leaf's sap artery is, broadly
speaking, due to there not being enough passes of the magic wand to
affect all the surface ! sorts of winged life. The flax-leaved Daphne Gnidium also
attracted notice in Eastern Liguria ; and by the Nervia
bridge, at Dolceacqua, and elsewhere near Sestri, the
spine-leaved blue-bloom-berried Juniper with needles
twice as long as the berry when ripe, which takes two years
to accomplish.

At Nervi, by the old mule-paths, was noticed a Nettle,
new to English eyes, with very thin long-stalked leaves,
and inflorescence differing with the sex : the male a curved
spike, on a winged stalk, and the female, a short-stalked
agglomeration at a lower level. It is sparsely supplied
with very venomous hairs.

With the Juniper we exhaust one great class of plants
and approach with reverential care, lest we misread or
inread too much that highly specialised group of Endogens
of which the Orchids, Lilies, and Grasses are grand types.

At Granarolo, above Genoa, about mid- April, we made
our first acquaintance with the insect, the fly imitating
Ophrys family, renewing it, with heightened amazement,
at Spezzia in May -time, the midsummer madness of Orchis,
Ophrys, and Serapias. Eleven species riot in the grassy
turf of a hill -side overlooking "La Superba": ivory white,
cream yellow, old rose, fawn, blue-gray, velvety brown,
red plush, green-veined pink and butterfly -winged purple,
all find some living green-thing of a flower to proudly or
shyly wear their colours in livery of garb that wondrously
closely represents a humble bee, a lady's mirror mounted
on black-purple plush like a coat of arms, a dark-bodied
blue-winged fly, a horse-fly, a saw fly, a diadem'd spider,
a livid leering satyr with tongue out, a chain-hanging
malefactor, legs splayed and arms dropped, or a striped
lizard suspended by its tail !

The Ophrys Bertolonii, of Morette, is the Bee Orch with
glazed shield on the back of the bumble's body ; the
Serapias lingua (commonest near Spezzia) and the Cordigera
with a third, a crossed intermediate, are the Iris-like
Orchids of more or less satyr and Silenus-like pose. The
Serapias cordigera, with its three-lobed tongue, purple
below, paler and browner towards its tip, in especial,
cosmically harmonises every hue and curve beautifully
ordered and synchronising through the successive stages
of its flower-time.

Orchis papilionacea, the Butterfly Orch, has a simple
conscious flaunt as of a pretty rustic about it, and the
commoner O. coriophora, with a variable sickly odour, is
almost the only Orchis with a distinctive rustic name
from its odour of bugs, it is the Cimiciattola of the Italian ;
whilst the tall, long loose-spray, deep violet blossomed
Orchis laxiftora (common near Spezzia) is simply the
Orch' di prato of the fields.

Another, O. Morio, var. picta, is very pretty, spurred,
with waved purple lip and wings of delicate rose with green
veins accentuating their slightness and transparency.

Yet another simulator is the O. simia, the Monkey Orchis,
of which but one was gathered ; and, still one more, the
Ophrys scolopax, of Cavanilles, the broad-veined toothed
lip of which seems to have a miniature long-billed Wood-
cock perched on the rim of the flower's throat, this effigy
being nor more nor less than the beak of the hood or helmet
which conceals the pollen masses and guards them from
wet. Another Ophrys, the O. Nicaeensis, Barla, a variety
of the Spider Orch, has a round, notched lip of brown velvet
impressed with crossing lines and dots of yellowish white,
similar to the markings of the Shrubbery Spider (Diadema) ,
which weaves such a wonderful geometrical web from leaf
to leaf on our Portugal Laurel bushes in the London parks.

Others not to be defined here are the variety Mon-
strosa a cross between the Green-winged Orchis -and O.
papilionacea ; O. tridentata, Scop. ; the sword-leaved
Cephalanthera ensifolia ; the pink hanging-man Orch
Acer as longibracteata ; the clove-scented Gymnadenia
conopsea ; and the other O. Fragrans which has
points about it that suggests hybridity, but with what
particular species it polygamates is not clear.

This ends the tale of these Orchs, the tribal features of
which are refinements and freakish adaptations far beyond
what obtains in any other less vegetised (one cannot say
civilised) races.

The Lilies, including the Garlics, present fewer difficul-
ties and so, perhaps, less interest to students. The most
beautiful and possibly biggest of all the Rivieran flowers
is amongst them, though not to be lightly gathered and dried
by reason of its proportions. This is the Amaryllid, by
name Pancratium maritimum, a lovely white, fringed cup
Lily, found on the sands of the shore (a shell idealised in a
flower) in many a spot between Cannes on the west to beyond
Albenga and Savona eastwardly. It flowers July to October
from a big sand-buried bulb, with glaucous daffodil leaf
blades, and an umbel of truly magnificent chalices of blossom,
with six stalked golden stamens growing from each second
dent of the twelve toothed crown of living alabaster.

Of the Arums, two were gathered the Friar's Cowl
(Arisarum vulgar e) of quaint rococo outline, its leaf a com-
promise between a blunt arrow-head flint and a mule's
calkin (it was got in October amidst the herbage of rocky
places), and the Italian Lords-and-Ladies, vulgo Phallus
monachi, with great diverging lobed arrow-shaped leaves,
the nerves of which are margined with white (through
absence of chlorophyll), got at Nervi in April, the immense
white spathe or sheath enclosing the female organs and the
male purple pollen-club at once revealing its kinship with
the great white cornucopia of the Lily of the Nile.

At Albenga the asperous Smilav Wild Sarsaparilla
attracts attention not only by its needle-fanged
leaves, which are a cross between heart and pike-head
in shape, wire stemmed, but by its tendrils climbing most
ornamentally over hedge vegetation.

The bicoloured (crown and ruff two shades of yellow)
Narcissus Tazetta was gathered above Genoa.

In sandy fields and in corn near Spezzia the beautiful
hyacinth (Bellevalia comosa, Kunth) arrays its habitats in
crowned spires of vividest violet, both individually and
en masse, like the red Poppy, a glory for the eye while its
loveliness lasts.

At Sestri Levante and again (in fruit) at Pegli, the singu-
lar leafy Tongue-Bloom, Ruscus hypoglossus (" very rare in
the Arma valley, Ceriana," says Mr. Bicknell) cried out for
notice. The two-inch acute ovate "leaves" are but expan-
sions of the stem, as is shown by leaves bearing first a
flower and then a berry fruit, right in the central line of
the upper side of the leathery, laurelline blade. The real
" leaf " is minimised to an awl-like scale below.

The hollow-stemmed Asphodel (A . fistulosus) one of the
classic blooms of "the glory that was Greece " outstretched
its candelabra of six rayed white stars by the sides of the
mule-paths at Nervi, near Genoa, and elsewhere. Its
spires possess a prim pale charm all their own : the vestal
taper flames of the fallentis semita vitae that Horace
commemorates .

At Torriglia, in the Appennine foot hills (600-700 metres)
the Crocuses, (C. vernus and versicolor), white, purple, or
violet striped, are a gay feature of March and April, just
after the melting of the snow sets free their enciente corms
not a true bulb but a swollen rotund root-stock.

Only one Iris, or Fleur-de-Luce proper, was preserved,
the Yellow Flag of English water-meads (Iris pseud- A cor us),
seen near Albenga and in damp ground in the neighbour-
hood of Spezzia. It is not given for any place nearer, more
west, than that in Mr. Bicknell's Flora of Bordighera ;
nor does the Western Riviera harbour the distinct red and
green bearded Iris Italica, par excellence a Ligurian indigene ;
it occurs along the sands and railway banks at Borgio,
Verezzi, and near Finalmarina in " great profusion " in
early spring (Bicknell's Flowering Plants and Ferns of
the Riviera, Plate 67). Our example was gathered near
Portovenere, where, also in damp, sandy places, grew that
other Irid the Illyrian Corn Gladiolus (G. segetum], with
its one-sided spikes of rosy-purple trumpet blooms.

In October, in the stony bed of the Centa, near Albenga,
the neat violet rose heads of Allium pulchellum, Don, cried
out to be garnered. It is of the Shalot sort, with two or
three narrow leaves on the foot-high stem. In April,
near Nervi, was got Allium neapolitanum with numerous
paper-white stalked blossoms " lasting long in a water-
vase " (Bicknell). There, likewise, grew Allium paniculatum,
with pale rose purple heads of bloom (stamens not protruding
from the perianth) and prolongation of the flower-head
stalk through the umbel bearing silvery bulbil onions
a second string against extinction to hang on to life by.

In conclusion, of the many Grasses, Sedges and Fern allies,
what shall be said ? To the expert in those directions in
which perception and comparison are the paramount
factors, there are many both instructive and illuminative
forms, and a few of great decorative interest like the Canes,
Arundo Donax (often planted although very common and
native in damp places in the valleys), the fingered Andro-
pogon hirtum of variable facies, and the viviparous bulbous-
rooted Poa, so impious of aspect because of the baby tufts
of grass growing out of the parent inflorescence. But to
the casual tourist, who takes an interest in grass en masse
rather than in little, it is hardly possible to describe the
salient forms in a popular manner. The Burr-grass of Italy ,
Lappago or Tragus racemosus, with singularly pretty,
purplish spine-protected flower-sheaths, partial to hot,
sandy places where it can live when little else will, was
gathered near Albenga, and remains, though a mere mummy
dried, a continuing joy to the botanist. Briza maxima,
the great, brown silvery inflated Trembling Grass, was not
rare near Spezzia, while the huge green-plume panicles of
the Great Reed (Arundo Donax) never fail to give the
impression of combined grace and power. It is excelled,
perhaps, only by the Bamboo or the Sugar-Cane, which,
however, strike a coarser note. Then, again, those love-
grasses the Eragrostis megastachia and that of Ravenna ;
the branching Melics, M. major and M. Baugini, by the
roadside out to Portovenere from Spezzia ; mingle
with the graces and the beauties of idyllic days that
have come and gone to comrades, leaving in their wake
the silver streak of Memory which outlives much more
material things.

Last but earliest type of all in existing vegetal forms
the Horse-tails (Equisetum) , in four varieties 1, the field
E. arvense; 2, the swamp's E. palustre ; 3, the great bottle-
brush E. maximum, and 4, the loose-sheathed, branched
E. ramosissimum of sandy places were all retrieved from
the neglect they suffer at the hand of the passer-by. On
the Ligurian littoral they strike a note of reminder of
historic Change, unending, still evolving in the vegetable
world, its Alphas, its Deltas, ay ! and the rest, through the
letters that are as eons in Evolution, though not, it must
be added, down to any Omega of the present day.