ORONTIUM AQUATICUM. 



strange plant, of most un-Orobian and un-lathyroid habit, makes stiff 

 stems of 2 feet or so, that tend to go flop, straight along the ground ; 

 the ample foliole, clothed in white hairs, has a handsome folded effect, 

 and the long-stemmed axillary clusters of large pale-yellow flowers 

 appear in July and August. It will thrive in any fair conditions, and 

 in catalogues is always called Lathyrus pannonicus Smithii. 



0. t>, ; Lathy r us tuberose..?, a very rare English native, very 



abundant in the one station which it fills with its twining stems and 

 heads of pink peas. 



0. variegatHS is rather taller than 0. vernus. with graceful erect wiry 

 stems in spreading clumps from knotty but not running root- 

 stocks. It is most abundant in flower, having ten or a dozen blooms 

 to a stem, daintily borne and making a lovely show a little later in the 

 summer than does 0. vermis, of blossom rather smaller perhaps, but 

 much more profuse, alike in number of flowers and in number of 

 sprays, and carried too on a plant of smaller leafage, so as to make 

 even more of an effect. The delicate colour varies in pinks and 

 light purples with various garden forms, of which one (very beautiful) 

 is Salmon-and-White in the flower, and in the Catalogue-name also. 

 This will thrive in the common conditions that suit the race, and is 

 indeed native to the mountain copses of South and Mid-Europe, to 

 the Levant. (The species is confused with 0. p. nanus in lists.) 



. va r i us . See under . pa n non ic us . 



Orontium aquaticum is a shallow -water Aroid that makes 

 tufts of dark-green oval-pointed foliage, among which all round appear 

 in late summer countless 6-inch rat-tails of yellow spathes, bending 

 stiffly this way and that, but not succeeding thereby in eliciting any 

 more attention or enthusiasm. 



Orphanidesia gaultherioeides is a most attractive creeping 

 undershrub suggesting Epigaea repens, and found beneath the Rhodo- 

 dendrons in the alpine regions of Lazic Pontus. 



Ostrowskia magnifica. — Get large trunks of this as thick as 

 your arm. ram down the surface of a sloping and very- deep limy loam- 

 bed in full sun until it is as hard as a threshing-floor. Then, with a 

 crowbar, work a deep enough hole in this to take the trunk, put it in, 

 fill up the hole, stamp it firm., and you need never again have a thought 

 for 0. magnifica, which for the rest of your lifetime will continue 

 untended to throw up its stout boles and open its colossal Platycodon- 

 Bowere is June ; after which the succulent glaucous stems and foliage 

 die down with ad g promptitude, and leave their hideous 



wreckage hanging dolefully all the rest of the season. Ostrowskia may 

 be Bused from seed if you have profitably studied the virtues of Job ; 



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