BETWEEN DIANTHUS AND EPILOBIUM 101 
white, with darker veining and a purple eye—delicate 
as Nierembergia frutescens and entrancing as Geranium 
lancastriense. 
The one thing that Linum salsoloeides needs is ex- 
posure; the one thing he cannot and will not put up 
with is excessive damp. Give him a high, hot crevice, 
and I dare warrant you will have no more trouble with 
him, but increasing pleasure from year to year. He is 
not a difficult plant, but dislikes any neglect of his own 
pet fads: ‘Don’t try no impogician with him, for he will 
not abear it.’ 
Other Flaxes that come in very handy are the tall, 
bushy, blue-flowered Linwm sibiricum, with its white form 
—often sent out in plants or seeds for the rarer alpinum, 
so be careful—a perennial version of the commercial 
Flax; and Linum viscosum, another south-European, 
growing about a foot high, with large, soft, pink flowers. 
These are quite comfortable to deal with, though viscosum 
must be planted where moisture in winter cannot annoy 
him. He is a compatriot of salsoloeides, which is hard 
on him, I feel. For salsoloeides has so pure an elegance 
of charm, that the stout leafy boughs of viscosum and 
its big mauve flowers seem, in comparison, blowzy and 
commonplace. 
Vhe St. John’s Worts are a large and showy race ; 
and the more ordinary sorts are so well known and so 
much grown that I need not mention them, except to 
suppose that no rock-gardener will have the unhappy 
notion of bringing Hypericum calycinum anywhere near 
the rock-garden. A worse weed, and a handsomer, was 
never known. The taller species, moserianum, patulum, 
nepalense, aureum, A scyron, Androsaemum, are all valuable 
for backgrounds, but of plants for the rock-work itself 
the order gives us a few really valuable ones. Hypericum 
olympicum is sometimes very beautiful. It is a frail- 
