THE GREATER BOG-PLANTS 173 
and all, are of a temper indomitably robust, able to look 
after themselves anywhere, capable of coping with any 
native weed, no less free and sturdy than their sister the 
common Meadow-sweet. All they ask is a rich, cool soil, 
like that of a damp meadow. They don’t clamour for extra 
moisture or bog-treatment, but revel in any such position 
as the banks of a ditch. At the same time my visionary 
wood-garden must be very careful how it admits the 
Spiraeas into the neighbourhood of the great Lilies. For 
the fiery orange and scarlet of the Tiger and the Panther 
simply yell and squall, like furious Kilkenny cats, against 
the chalky pinks of the Spiraeas. This colour, radiant 
and clean, is the one weakness of the tall Meadow-sweets, 
inasmuch as it is very reluctant to mix on equal terms 
with any other. 
First and foremost of the big Spiraeas comes gigantea. 
This is the ordinary Meadow-sweet multiplied by three, 
an enormous tropical thing, waving wide plumes of 
creamy-white at the top of eight-foot stems, clothed in 
broad palmate leaves. In the pink form the flowers are 
are of a pale, ineffective rose, but the type is incompar- 
ably better, in richness and splendour of effect. Spiraea 
gigantea, besides being as easy as all its kindred, has, 
like Aruncus, a hearty readiness to seed itself about the 
garden. 
Next comes, for old friendship’s sake, the common 
Meadow-sweet, gigantea’s little sister, a native whom no 
one need ever be afraid to admit, as, however freely it 
grows, it never proves a stubborn usurper, nor makes 
itself difficult to deal with. Lovely Spiraea palmata is 
larger than wlmaria and smaller than gigantea, coming 
about half-way between them, though in leafage and 
habit it is nearer to gigantea. And its flower is far 
more brilliant than either, being a flat plume of soft, 
bright rose. However, palmata varies very much from 
