246 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
flowered /filiformis, are too frail and delicate to prosper 
long in the rough and tumble of the garden. 
Sedum villosum 1 have already mentioned. This is 
a dear pretty little creature, which nobody seems to 
know or to grow. It is, I expect, of biennial tendency, 
but seeds happily, and is charming for damp soil or 
rock in the bog-garden, a frail wee grower, making 
one or two spikes of fat little leaves, about two or 
three inches high, crowned, in June, with big Catherine- 
wheel flowers of a soft waxy pale pink. The common 
Grass of Parnassus every one knows, on the contrary. 
Does every one grow it? I, for my part, have always 
found it less easy and more capricious than its much 
more beautiful brother, Parnassia fimbriata, which I 
collected years ago in the Rockies. This, though it 
thrives most robustly in rich damp soil, is able to thrive 
robustly almost everywhere ; a better-tempered plant was 
never imported. It has taller stems than palustris, a 
much freer habit, larger, crowded clumps, and larger 
white flowers, with the eponymous fringe of fine white 
hairs between each petal at their base. The other 
Parnassias are almost identical with fimbriata and palus- 
tris, and therefore less worthy of culture than the supreme 
fimbriata; there is one, however, nubicola, I think, or 
perhaps caroliniana, which affects yellow or a yellowish 
shade for its flowers. This I have grown, failed with, 
and forgotten. I cannot have had much pleasure 
from it. 
Of ferns and grasses our own woods and fells give us 
one or two valuable plants for the bog. Near by must 
be the Beech-fern, on a high bank of light, rich, rotten 
soil. And infinitely more beautiful than Polypodium 
phegopteris, with the rather arid dusty green of its fronds, 
Polypodium dryopteris must certainly claim our worship. 
Than the rich brilliant emerald of the Oak-fern’s fronds, 
