26 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
CHAPTER 1 
DE Shrubs, mostly Ebergreen 
Mostty, I head this chapter, because in the great ever- 
green races there occur deciduous species, and vice versa. 
And it would be jerky and pedantic to keep my reader 
hopping backwards and forwards from chapter to chapter 
in order to join up the disconnected ranks of Magnolia 
or Azalea. Nor will I make apology for using this latter 
name. It is hard that, where botany swarms with ugly 
names, hideous, hard, teutonic, latinised Russ and bastard 
Greek, a name so simple, gracious and euphonious as 
Azalea should be torn from us, and we be left with no 
refuge but the lumbering if orotund syllables of Rhodo- 
dendron. ‘Therefore, since no one can be in doubt what 
is meant by Azalea, I will continue in the old, superseded 
ways. If all races were so unmeaningly, so sweetly 
named, our gardens would be happier, our labels less 
deforming. But we are at the mercy of chance, it seems, 
in these matters. It was mere luck that the eponymous 
hero of the Yulans was able, being a M. Magnol, to 
supply so appropriate and fragrant a generic name as 
Magnolia. On such a frail coincidence does the question 
of nomenclature depend. Suppose the Magnolias were 
Smithias, Von Borkias, Mulliganias? And it is mere 
luck that they aren’t. If their discoverer had had his life 
saved by the Mulligan (of Ballymulligan), and had 
nourished due gratitude, Heaven knows what might have 
