14 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
bloomed nitida alba, pure white against the pure silver of 
the foliage, would be one of the loveliest little plants of 
the rock-garden. All forms of Potentilla nitida, too, grow 
with the most perfect ease and good humour in any fair 
soil, in any sunny spot, and multiply from cuttings like 
any bedding Viola. ‘The plant’s only fault, and one to 
be very carefully guarded against, is a tendency to go to 
sleep in rich soil, and prove to be painfully shy about 
flowering. ‘This, however, can be remedied by planting 
it in rubble and dust. I have not yet tried it in the 
Moraine-garden, but it will probably succeed there and 
bloom abundantly. Very similar, too, in habit is the 
rare newcomer, apennina, of which my one _ plant 
looks a twin of nitida, though I believe the flowers are 
white. 
Over such diverse-seeming species as Potentilla, Rubus 
and Spiraea does Rosa extend the shelter of its great 
name, and now, in due course, we come to deal with the 
roses. For the most part these are middling shrubs (1 
shall scarcely talk of the garden kinds, the doubles, and 
hybrids), very welcome on the upper banks of the rock- 
garden. But the first in merit for big and little terri- 
tories alike is Rosa alpina, a small, neat, dense shrub, 
finely thorny, with abundant lovely flowers of a deep 
velvety crimson, and sweetly, richly fragrant beyond any 
rose I know. Ona warm day the hot, deep sweetness of 
this rose’s scent is something almost vertiginous. Then, 
when the flowers are fallen, succeed long scarlet heps that 
prolong the charm of the plant till far into the autumn. 
Rosa alpina is so easy-going and sturdy a species that it 
will fend freely for itself if cast out unprotected in the 
woods (indeed I wonder that it has never appeared as a 
native), and, at the same time, it is so concise and modest 
in growth that no one need be afraid to admit it into 
even the smallest of gardens. Similar in size, but much 
