186 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
importance. Any cool moist soil, in peat or loam, will 
please the Rodgersia, and it does not enjoy exposure to 
torrid sunshine. ‘The same remarks apply to the new 
pinnata, with dainty graceful spires of Spiraea-like 
bloom, either white or pink, and to the still newer and 
rarer tabularis. 
I have no strong affection for the Megasea Saxifrages, 
such as ligulata and afghanica—leather-leaved, large 
things, with coarse flat heads of pink or white. But 
Saxifraga peltata reigns a queen by bog and lakeside, 
and I greatly wonder that I have not already paid it 
my heavy debt of gratitude. Sawifraga peltata hails 
from California, and yet is of the most imperturbable 
hardiness and vigour. Its gnarled, knotted root-stock 
goes crawling about over the bare rock at the water’s 
edge, suggesting the tentacles of the octopus, combined 
with the wrinkly blackness of an elephant’s trunk. From 
the round green knob in which each wandering tentacle 
ends, there rises in early spring, on a tall bristly pink 
stalk about three feet high or so, a shower, like a 
spreading rocket, of innumerable rosy stars. Then the 
flower dies, and up break the splendid leaves in abund- 
ance—large, palmate, brilliant, having something of the 
Nelumbium’s beautiful cupped design, though glossy- 
green, hispid and incised. ‘They are carried high, some- 
times to the height of a man, and in a few seasons one 
plant will form a mass in which cowering Monmouth 
might have found better covert than among his cabbages 
—or was it barley? ‘Then, in autumn, each broad um- 
brella fades into russet, orange, scarlet, violet; and so 
droops and pales at the approach of winter. So vigor- 
ous and so beautiful is this Saxifrage that one’s only 
peril lies in using too much of it. It should certainly be 
established everywhere, as it will look after itself among 
the roughest weeds of the woodland and the water-side. I 
