178 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
For these are the Groundsels, and a larger race of duller 
and more pernicious graceless weeds does not exist on the 
face of the globe. In every age, in every clime, by every 
race abhorred, the Groundsels, in their innumerable 
ugly avatars, possess the wide earth to the exclusion of 
the meek, its lawful heirs. Meekness is no virtue of the 
Groundsels ; dowdy they may be, and most generally are ; 
but where beauty occurs in the race, it appears with an 
ostentatious arrogance that betrays consciousness of its 
rarity. For there are beautiful Senecios, whose beauty 
admits of no question. I name four—pulcher, japonicus, 
clhvorum, and Doronicum. It is true that japonicus is 
ashamed of its cousinship, scorns the hated name of 
Senecio, and lurks nowadays under the disguise of 
Erythrochaete japonica. But not even this barbarous 
blend of Greek and Latin can secure it from recognition. 
Senecio it is and will be, with big leaves, round in design, 
but deeply incised, and clusters of very large flowers of a 
radiant, intense golden-orange, carried on stems two or 
three feet high. Senecio japonicus is fine and brilliant 
for the large bog, loving any deep, cool, rich soil, and its 
one fault is a certain niggardliness in the matter of 
flowering. 
But Senecio clivorum is the giant of the race, forming 
in three years from seed a mass, six feet across and as 
many high, of great rounded leaves on long stalks, and 
countless sturdy tall masts, adorned with many-flowered 
heads of enormous orange blossoms. Like japonicus, 
clivorum blooms through late summer and autumn, and is 
of prime value for some high, bold point in any wood or 
bog-garden whose extent is large enough to hold such a 
Titan ; it is a ramping rooter, in deep rich soil, not 
parched or dusty; is perfectly robust and hardy; and 
never makes a weed of itself, but multiplies the number 
of its crowns until it forms a big, centralised clump after 
