130 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
terebinthinaceum. If any one is bold enough to order this, 
they will find it handsome, with very tall stems carrying 
big Helianthus-like flowers, while the leaves at the base 
of the plant are fine and effective. However, it is not a 
patch on a good Helianthus, I must confess. Of the 
Rudbeckias I don’t grow any more now—ever since I was 
irritated by Lepachys columnaris, which had futile, pale 
yellow daisies, with a silly sort of snout cocking up in 
the middle. The Mulgediums or Giant Lettuces are very 
splendid things though—to be admitted with caution 
into the garden. ‘The biggest and most robustious is 
Mulgedium Plumieri, which nothing can hold in bounds. 
He is a glorious wild-garden, or rough bank plant, de- 
vouring yards and yards each season, and covering them 
with big hairy leaves whose underside is rusty purple. 
Then, in August, up go the stout flower stems six or 
eight feet high, carrying heads of blossom like large 
violet Dandelions. My thianshanicum is similar, but 
bluer in flower, and much milder in growth, forming a 
nice, neat, glossy clump, that never seems to spread about 
or grow greedy. 
But the prettiest Mulgedium in my garden is Bourgaei, 
which makes one dense crown that gets denser and denser 
every season without any further spread. ‘The abundant 
flowers are smaller than those of Plumieri, and carried in 
long lax sheaves. Their colour is of a peculiarly delicate 
and beautiful rosy blue—very gentle and soft, yet quite 
pure and decided in tone. Prenanthes is a quaint thing, 
vaguely recalling a starved Mulgedium, but even more like 
an Oat which, by some strange miracle, has developed 
tiny violet flowers. This queer creature inhabits all the 
Swiss mountain woods, and neither my manager nor I 
profess any wild affection for it; however, it deserves my 
gratitude for the happy way in which it has taken 
possession of a very barren place under a Laurus Tinus in 
