Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/100

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80
HERBACEOUS PLANTS.

Kan-su ranges; the absence of the hazel is equally notable.

The streams are frequently fringed with willow (Salix sp.), and tall buckthorn (Hippophaë rhamnoides) fifteen feet high; on the open mountain side are the hawthorn (Cratægus sp.), yellow camel-thorn (Caragana sp.), and white kurile tea[1] (Potentilla glabra).

Herbaceous plants are even more numerous. The wild strawberry (Fragaria sp.) is plentiful on the moist loamy soil; patches of moss are sometimes covered with pink flowers of a pretty Pedicularis; in the woodland glades many a bright peony may be seen, with a groundsel (Ligularia sp.), valerian (Valeriana sp.), meadow rue (Thalictrum sp.), geranium (Geranium sp.), columbine (Aquilegia sp.), winter-green (Pyrola rotundifolia), garlic (Allium Victorialis), great burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis), Rubia Javanica? Prenanthes sp., Pleurospermum sp., the clematis twining round the bushes, and the rosebay willow-herb (Epilobium angustifolium) adorning the grassy slopes with its rose-coloured flowers. Later in the season, towards the end of July, we found in the same localities the great yellow and twining wolf's-bane (Aconitum lycoctonum, and the A. volubile), larkspur (Delphinium sp.), tansy (Tanacetum sp.), the upright bitter-vetch (Orobus Lathyroides), feverfew (Pyrethrum Sinense), the creeping

  1. The Potentilla fruticosa and P. glabra are known in Siberia under the name of Kurile tea; a name given to this plant owing to the circumstance of the inhabitants of Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk infusing a beverage from its leaves. — M.