164 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
gons. ‘They bloom early, too, before the other great 
Lilies are showing bud. The remaining yellow Turk’s 
Caps are the true pomponium, a very vigorous grower of 
medium stature, which has the rare demerit of a most 
hateful stench; and Hansoni, a yellow counterpart of 
Martagon itself, with which, though it is held an easy 
species, I have seldom done much good. ‘The enthusiast, 
of course, will grow the rarer species, alike of the 
Cup-shaped and the Turk’s Cap sections — maritimwm, 
concolor, and dainty little starry Coridion. But 
these, difficult and evanescent, need not trouble the 
general gardener; and as for the Big Cups, tall Bate- 
manniae and thunbergianwn, dwarf alutacewm, and 
elegans in a dozen forms, these are pretty and robust, 
but fitted for the ordinary border. Of the other Turk’s 
Caps, the most valuable is chalcedonicum, with its better, 
black-stemmed variety, excelswm, with flowers of dazzling 
sealing-wax scarlet that appear in August and September. 
But this loves warm, dryish places in the border, or among 
light grass. 
Of ‘fancy’ Lilies there is rosewm, like a dull pink 
Asphodel, and a blue-flowered species—a true Lilium, and 
truly blue, though only of a dull slaty shade, which has 
recently been discovered in Korea. But of these the 
first is rarely grown, and the second has never been 
introduced. I shall not easily forget how I scoured a 
high Korean down for it in early March. The short 
grass was still sere and wintry ; here and there the steep 
slopes were dotted with stunted bushes of Pinus koraiensis. 
Beyond, clear blue against the sky, rose sharp sterile 
peaks, and very far away below, to the utmost range of 
the eye, extended, map-like, the ridged, gravelly desola- 
tion of Korea. And on that Alpine pass the earliest sign 
of life was a Lily pushing its first soft shoot of green 
from the bulb. In the hope that it might prove the blue 
