102 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
looking thing—at least in the form I knew and loved years 
since—with thin, wiry leaves and stems, crowned by three 
or four immense golden blooms. But olympicum, I found, 
required starvation ; in good soil he grew lumpish, and 
the flowers tried to come out all at once, and made 
a jumble of it, and looked stodgy and vulgar. And then 
the plant died; and those I have now don’t look to me 
quite the same thing—their leaves seem rounder, some- 
how, and thicker. However, I shall not be able to decide 
until they bloom. Hypericum cuneatum is a small, new 
Alpine which I have only just got; and Hypericum 
diffuswm, another rarer treasure, was given me some 
years since, in cutting form, but failed to do any 
good. 
The two bracketed glories of the race are Hypericum 
reptans and Hypericum Coris. Reptans is a Himalyan, 
absolutely prostrate, falling over rock-faces in a dense 
cascade of little ovate leaves. The flowers appear from 
July to the end of October here, and are as large as a five- 
shilling bit—rose-red externally, and inside, of the love- 
liest radiant soft yellow, so pure and luminous that they 
make you look round on a dull day to see where the sun- 
light is falling from that so kindles them. The plant is un- 
imaginably good-tempered, too, and resents neither wind 
nor weather ; only plant it high on the rock-work that it 
may stream down in a curtain at eye-level, and show the 
fresh radiance of its pale golden suns. In spring its mats 
look dead and drear as Ulalume, but before very long 
they break up from the base, and soon the whole blessed 
process of development is in full swing. The plant can 
be raised with equal ease from seed or cuttings, and on 
every account—being absolutely without fault, either of 
appearance or demeanour—ranks high in the first half- 
dozen Alpines of one’s choice. ‘There is also a Hypericum 
repens, a pretty creature—but reptans so knocks all 
