OURISIA. 



but it must never be touched, once established, unless you go the 

 length of hacking up the whole vast trunk, to slice it in three or four, 

 and so start the fragments all again as separate plants. 



Ourisia, a Scrophulariaceous family of handsome foliage and 

 wandering rhizomes, forming a close carpet of foliage, above which 

 come shooting bare stems with flower-spikes often brilliant in colour. 

 The race is antarctic, and the greater number of the species for 

 which we hope call our eyes to New Zealand. Their needs are 

 a sheltered corner and room to grow in rich deep soil, rather 

 moist in summer but perfectly drained, and in winter kept dry. 

 All could be raised from their minute seeds, but division of the 

 rhizome offers the quickest way of increasing the stock of any species 

 once acquired. 



0. brevifolia, a charming little plant like Linaria hepaticaefolia, 

 running about in the crevices of the Aucklands, with large single white 

 flowers on the mass. 



0. caespitosa is quite a neat close tuffet, close-set with almost sessile 

 leaves, and sending up stalks of a couple of inches or so, with three or 

 four white blossoms at the top. 



0. coccinea is a Chilian species, and will always perhaps remain our 

 favourite in the race, at such a rate does it run about when suited, and 

 with such profusion send up stems of such very gorgeous long scarlet 

 flowers in tiers of outstanding trumpets. It succeeds or fails under 

 the most diverse conditions ; but if a sound clump, not over-divided, 

 can be got, it will never be amiss to plant it in rich and rather moist 

 well-drained ground, whether in sun or shade, when it will promptly 

 set about sending its fleshy rhizomes creeping far and wide over rock 

 and soil, forming a hearty carpet of crumpled-looking, scalloped, 

 bright -green leaves, above which come starting those 8-inch stems in 

 early summer. 



0. Cockayniana is a matted creeper, with the same bright -green 

 leaves, quite smooth, in pairs. The stems are about 6 inches high, 

 purplish in colour, with white flowers of an inch long. 



0. Colensoi is a reduced alpine state of 0. macrocarpa, q.v. 



0. glandulosa makes big patches of rather coarse leathery leafage, 

 and has stout branching stems, with flowers half the length of those 

 in 0. Cockayniana. 



O. macrocarpa is the finest of all, with generous whorls of large 

 white blossoms. We may picture the plant from the next species, 

 which we possess, and which is about half the size in all its parts. 



0. macrophylla has ample dark foliage, rather downy-haired (unlike 

 the last, which is smooth), and stout stems, carrying whorls of white 



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