THE GREATER BOG-PLANTS 189 
parts, who bulks large in many gardening books. ‘The 
plant is not easy to grow, uncertain in temper, miffy in 
constitution, exacting as to climate, dependent on perfect 
drainage and abundant moisture. And when, after all 
these stumbling-blocks have been surmounted, and you 
at last succeed with the plant, as one year I had the 
privilege of doing, you see a weedy growth like a poor 
Gentiana asclepiadea, carrying very similar flowers, 
trumpet-shaped, reddish outside and yellow within—or 
the other way round ; I cannot really remember. In any 
case I did not love it nor glory in it; and when it 
departed this life I did not replace it. Rhexia virginica 
is a compatriot, a tiny marsh shrub, loving wet sandy 
peat, and very gorgeous with its abundant large flowers 
of purplish crimson. I imagine them like those of 
Lagerstroemia indica on a small scale, clawed at the base. 
The truth is that I have never seen mine in flower. The 
plant has not done well with me, and when, one year, my 
manager succeeded with a fine batch of imported clumps, 
I was not there to see, and by the time I returned the 
Rhexias had relapsed into their more normal state of 
moribund sulkiness. In sunnier climates, with perfect 
drainage, this will probably do better; Rhevia mariana 
is unquestionably half-hardy, hailing from more southerly 
parts than virginica. 
A third American we have, of first-rate value for the 
bog, either big or choice, in Lychnis haageana. This 
comes readily from seed, grows willingly and freely, 
though never obstreperously, and is perfectly trustworthy 
and perennial. It loves the peaty bog, is tolerant of 
abundant damp, and looks after itself from year to year. 
It throws up rather weak, leafy stems to about two feet, 
and then freely produces round cart-wheel blossoms of an 
orange-scarlet more terrific than anything else in the 
garden—even Gerbera Jamesoni. It varies in colour, it is 
