190 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
true, from seed, but all its shades are brilliant. Lychnis 
fulgens and Lychnis grandiflora, its aboriginal types, have 
never done anything much with me, nor has another 
marsh Lychnis which has been reported beautiful— 
Lychnis striata, also from Japan, which sounds like 
another form of the fulgens group. Probably these two 
wanted hotter summers than I could supply. 
The May-Apples, hardly bog-plants, rejoice in a rocky 
nook within the influence of neighbouring damps, and 
look beautiful peering from a cliff in such elegant 
company as that of exquisite Adiantum pedatum, the 
hardy Maiden-hair from New Zealand, or of our own native 
Maiden-hair, of every greenhouse and all our Western 
coasts, if you are so fortunate as to establish it as a 
hardy perennial beneath some overhanging ledge of rock. 
The May-Apples are Himalyans, valuable purveyors of 
medicine, apart from other plants in their strange growth. 
Plump and juicy comes up the leaf stalk, then divides 
into two branches, from each of which droops, and then 
expands, a broad smooth’glossy leaf, which in peltatum is 
roughly rounded, and in /modi is of the same design but 
deeply divided into lobes. These leaves, of brilliant 
light green, are heavily veined and marbled with bronze 
and violet, nor do they ever lose this conspicuous beauty. 
Beneath the leaves, at the division of their pedicels, lurks 
coyly a small white flower like a tiny Paeony ; in peltatum 
these are rather inconspicuous; in /modi they are really 
very charming when once you have discovered them. 
Here, more or less, ends the tale of peltatum, but modi’s 
flower gives place to an enormous seed-pod of the most 
brilliant vermilion, and a fine clump of this Podophyllum, 
carrying a dozen stems or more, each bowed beneath this 
weight of colour, is a splendid sight in early autumn, 
though the birds are greedy to rifle its beauties. Though 
peltatum also forms a pod, this enters into no sort of 
