Primula veris - cowslip - primevère

As the name suggests it is one of the first spring flowers to appear in the fresh & wet areas of our alpine regions.

The flowers can be used to help as an expectorant when one has a cough in the spring months.

Achillea millefolium - Common yarrow - Achillée millefeuille

A magical plant!

 The leaves from this flower are as it says, thousands, millefeuille. 

They help stop hemorraging. 

I once cut my finger and tied a leaf around the cut and it stopped! 

I had been bleeding non-stop for a good 5 minutes, 

and no amount of pressure I was applying was helping. 

You can make a delicious tea out of the flower heads to help with feminine problems. 

Just be sure not to give this to anyone who has any blood issues!!! 

Grasshoppers like them too!

Salvia pratensis - Sauge des prés - Wild Sage

This is one you see all summer long in the fields. 

You can use & eat the flowers as decorations in salads. 

The leaves are used to make infusions that are supposed to make your throat feel good. 

It is particularly tasty as a sirop in summer. 

Nigritella rhellicani - Orchis vanille - Vanilla orchid

This cutie grows between 1500-2500 meters so you will only find it in the mountains. They don't grow very tall, so you have to get onto your knees to stick your nose on it to find out why it has the word vanilla in its name. Ohhhhh! It is soooo worth it!

Wild orchids are all protected in Switzerland, so don't pick it when you see it please!

Aquilegia vulgaris - Ancolie commune - Common Columbine

This is a toxic plant!

 Be careful because at my house it grows in my veggie garden, so be aware that not everything that grows or is eaten by wild animals or even domestic animals is good for human consumption.

I like the back trumpet shapes in the petals (technically called spurred petals)!

It is this claw shape that has given it its name 'aquila' is Latin for eagle.

 It is definitely tooting its horn!

It produces a lot of seeds, so it is impossible to get out of a veggie garden. 

It attracts bumblebees and I love to watch their furry bodies inside them. 

The openings are not adequately shaped for our honey bees, so they actually pierce the back trumpets to get to the nectar! Isn't nature cool?

Geranium silvaticum - Wood cranesbill - Géranium des bois

Hey guess what? 

These are all over the place all summer long, 

at most altitudes people walk around in, 

and they are edible! 

Yeah, just pick a bunch (make sure they are not in a polluted spot) 

and scatter them in your salads or picnic!

Dryas octopetala - Dryade à 8 pétales / Chênette - Mountain Avens

A flower with 8 white petals

This is a cute white flower with a bright happy yellow center! It is an alpine flower and its leaves remain green all year around. They say here in Switzerland that they were used during World War I & II to make tea. I think the Swiss military that were at altitude to protect the borders were melting snow every day and that eventually they would get to the bottom of the snowpack and find these green leaves, having nothing much to eat why not add them to the meltwater for taste? I have tried it in my hot water thermos and personally I did not think much of it as a tea, but then again I was not up in the Alps in the middle of winter freezing my hands & feet waiting for some military invasion, so I can imagine that to them it was a different thing altogether. 

This is what it looks like when it has gone to seed. A bunch of hair sticking straight up, waiting for the wind to take away the seeds and spread them further along the crest of the Alps to bloom elsewhere in the summertime. As you can see the leaves have not changed color as the flower has bloomed and gone to seed.