BETWEEN DIANTHUS AND EPILOBIUM 115 
Orobus varius. "These are both plants of imperturbable 
vigour and hardiness, growing persistently, thriftily on, 
in any decent position, even in the open border. Hirsutus 
forms a prostrate flopping mass of foliage, covered all 
through the summer with a profusion of single wine- 
coloured and purple flowers, like big violets. Varius, 
erect, slender, graceful, grows about a foot high, has 
fine delicate leaves and loose spikes of the loveliest 
blossoms, clear-white and salmon-rose, that appear in 
early summer. 
The Potentillas are beloved by many, but not by me. 
In fact, I can muster no love for any Potentilla over six 
inches high. Hippiana, pulcherrima, argyrophylla, and 
the rest have all been tried, conscientiously admired, and 
secretly disliked. Brilliant as they may be, to me they 
seem coarse and leafy. However, I hope better things 
from fulgens, which has just been given me with high 
recommendations. And splendens is small and pretty—a 
silver strawberry. These Potentillas have such marvellous 
names, all of them — pulcherrima, formosa, argentea, 
chrysocraspeda, crinita — you expect something after 
that ; pulcherrima ought to be at least pretty. And no 
authoritative work ever describes these people either, so 
that when one is working over a catalogue, one has to 
go by these awe-inspiring adjectives, and order the plants 
they belong to, in the hope that they may not be liars, 
these sonorous epithets. But they generally are. Poten- 
tilla nitida, however, is certainly a jewel—I seize the 
opportunity of repeating its praises—well worthy of its 
comparatively modest but truthful name. Other beauties 
are the natives verna and alpestris, the double form of 
that awful weed, reptans, the silvery Valderia, and a name- 
less little white ramper I collected in the Rockies. Other- 
wise the long lists of names that swell out Potentilla in 
catalogues are too apt to be tall or dowdy plants. The 
