46 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
greens or shrubs. In any case my remarks will take the 
form of warnings to a great extent. I know no Bamboo 
that can safely be trusted inside the rock-garden. Once 
they start they are the most fearful of growers. Pyg- 
maea is pretty and mild-looking, only a foot high or so, 
but, when established, it eats up space like a motor, 
seeming to engulf fresh pastures every hour. Ruscifolia 
(I am not troubling here with the distinctions between 
Phyllostachys, Arundinaria, and Bambusa) is even prettier 
—smaller and neater, with dense little boughs feathered 
with leaves like those of the Butcher’s Broom. So far as I 
know it, this plant, though also a ramper, may be trusted, 
as it does not increase so voraciously as pygmaca, and 
can easily be kept in bounds. And it is certainly 
most dainty, pretty, and attractive, as well in summer 
as in winter. Bambusa quadrangularis has proved too 
tender here, but a brilliant success among the smaller 
kinds has been B. Veitchi. This is dwarf, and big leaved, 
growing a foot or more in height—a miniature, roughly 
speaking, of palmata. And round the edge of each 
vivid green leaf there fades a clear rim of pure white, so 
that a well-grown dense mass of this is a delight to see. 
But Veitchi will certainly prove a tyrant. It covers all 
the Japanese Alps in a close jungle, and in England will 
probably prove extremely valuable as a covert-plant, 
as its hardiness is undoubted, and I have noticed in Japan 
that its vigour always increased as it mounted towards 
the high cold, while it Hagged and died as you descended 
from the hills. 
Of the larger Bamboos, palmata is another plant for 
general or covert use, a terrific grower when once started ; 
with few and very large leaves to a growth. It thinks 
nothing of shooting three or four yards underground, and 
coming up, like Arethusa, in the most improbable places. 
Away with all thought of it from the rock-garden. 
