36 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
to luck. I have lost many, and succeeded with a 
few, and never yet flowered one. 
Camellia japonica will probably never reach, in Eng- 
land, the huge, tree-like proportions it attains in Japan. 
But it is an absolutely certain doer, almost anywhere, 
perfectly hardy and requiring no sort of care or protec- 
tion. It is more, of course, of a wild-wood tree than a 
rock-garden shrub, but when well-developed, has a rare 
magnificence, with its grey, smooth trunk, and its burden 
of flame-like crimson flowers, single, golden-eyed, that 
nestle amid the dark, glossy leafage. It is so one sees it 
in the wood above the Shiba Temple-Tombs in ‘Tokio, 
and from the shade one looks down and notes how the 
fierce sun beyond kindles each one of these fiery blossoms 
to a ring of scarlet flame. For, in the type-form, the 
blossoms, much harsher and hotter in colour, have the 
same luminosity that you get in reticulata. I growa 
white form, too, Yuki migiriima, Snow-circle, aan is 
one of the purest and loveliest things I have ever seen. 
Camellia japonica does not carry the individual flowers 
for very long, and their tendency to drop when touched 
has made the plant unlucky in Japanese romance, as it is 
thus credited with an analogy to decapitation and sudden 
death. 
Of the Daphnes I have already treated of the special 
rock-garden species—cneorum, rupestris, and alpina. But 
indica claims notice here, for its absolute, indestructible 
hardiness. My plants hail from the Tokio Plain, and 
have never quailed or blenched before the most awful 
winters, though quite without protection. ‘They grow on, 
too, like weeds, in any soil, and I only trust they will one 
day take it into their heads to flower as profusely as they 
grow. ‘The same rusticity could probably be proved of 
Dauphini. Another valuable species or group is that 
diversely named thing, Daphne fioniana, neapolitana, 
