Edelweiss

Edelweiss (Gnaphalium Leontopodium) is a small but pretty composite found growing in damp places at considerable altitudes (5000 to 7000 feet) throughout the Alps. On account of the characteristic beauty of its aspect, which is due to a covering of long white woolly hairs, and partly, of course, also on account of the difficulty of obtaining it, it is much prized. It is worn by guides and tourists in their hats, and becomes in summer quite an article of minor commerce, dried as a book specimen made up into little tufts, so that measures have lately been necessary in Switzerland to prevent its total extirpation from its native haunts. It can, however, be cultivated without much difficulty, and can be seen in many collections of Alpine Plants (q.v.).