Botanical atlas

Alpine Pink

Dianthus alpinus

Alpine pink has always belonged more to the mountain than to the kitchen garden. Botanists and alpine plant collectors have prized it since the 1700s for the way it clings to bare Alpine scree and rewards that hardship with a flush of vivid, fringed, clove-scented blooms each summer. It belongs to the same beloved family as the garden pinks and clove carnations that European cottage gardeners have grown for centuries, their petals steeped into wine, vinegar, and sugar for their spicy fragrance, though alpine pink itself, being a true high-altitude specialist, remained a treasure of rock gardeners and botanical collectors rather than a cottage herb in its own right. Today it is grown chiefly for the pleasure of coaxing a piece of the high Alps into a trough or rockery at home.

Safety.

Alpine pink is not known to be toxic and is safe to grow and handle as an ornamental, though it has no documented culinary or medicinal use.