268 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
that you have to be very careful how you introduce it. 
Not a Spiraea in the whole garden but shrieks piteously 
in the neighbourhood of that relentless vermilion ; 
the Panther Lily turns acrid, and the orange of Senecio 
Clivorum completes a chord almost too powerful for 
endurance. ‘The only other Lobelia of importance—for 
radicans has turned out unable to bear our sunless 
summers, and grows perpetually without flowering '— 
is the queer little aquatic Dortmanna. Lobelia Dort- 
manna inhabits mountain lakes in northern England, 
Wales, and Scotland, growing, like any Chara, right at 
the bottom of the water, making its little tuft of fat, 
linear, blunt-ended leaves under four feet or so of Alpine 
tarn. ‘Then, in summer, up through the ripple comes 
the flower-stalk, and unfolds three or four large flowers 
of very pale China blue, just above the surface of the 
water. I first saw Dortmanna among the Welsh moun- 
tains, in drying mud-flats beside a little lake, and, though 
I confess I have never yet grown it, I see no reason at all 
why it should not be as easy as it certainly is pretty. 
As a rule, difficulty and ill-temper are not the prevailing 
faults of aquatic plants. Rather the other way. 
‘Vhere are one or two other cautions I would hint as to 
planting the edge of your pond. Do not overdo the use 
of Iris. The Irises, in their sword-like foliage, give you 
a charm of the first order. Do not cheapen it by too 
frequent use and repetition; let us have one or two Iris 
clumps, contrasting with the other, lusher leafage, rather 
than weaken the effect of both by dotting Irises too 
copiously along the shore. I would counsel three or four 
clumps of sibirica, arranged in a row—sibirica is ex- 
tremely decorative thus, in a row—and one sheaved mass 
of Kaempferi, at a commanding, prominent point of the 
edge; while, of course, you will use, not more than once, 
* This last winter, too, has finally cured it of even that good habit. 
