OXALIS. 



blossom almost suggestive in habit of a Pentstemon. This blooms in 

 the later summer, and the stems are a foot high or so. 



0. magdlanica has fat leaves of a couple of inches, and large white 

 flowers on stems that begin branching and blooming almost from their 

 ■ 



O. prorepcns is a creeping slender species, with delicate sprayed 

 stalks and large white trumpets. 



0. seszilifolia makes a pale-green mat of small scalloped leaves, 

 pressed to the ground ; from this rise stems of some 2 to 6 inches, carry- 

 ing big white blossoms with a base of purple. 



Oxalis. — Our own native Wood-sorrel gives a lovely variety with 

 flowers of bright rosy pink ; but the race has also many exotic treasures 

 to offer, being predominantly a family of the warmth, and of South 

 America, straying over into Europe and reaching the North no less 

 than the cold Antarctic Islands, where 0. magellanica is like an exquisite 

 small version of the Wood-sorrel. Very lovely too, in the same line 

 and for the same situation, is 0. violacea, from the Northern States of 

 America, which is a Wood-sorrel with purple blossoms. Unfortunately 

 man}* of the most beautiful South American or Cape species, such as 0. 

 monophylh. 0. rosea, 0. lobata (specially beauteous). 0. fioribunda, &c, 

 though often safe and successful in favoured places in light soil, cannot 

 always be recommended for permanent general cultivation in England, 

 though even in a climate such as Yorkshire's, 0. rosea on the rock- 

 work was the glory of three unprotected seasons, filling the later 

 summer days with the cheer of its rosy cups ; while even lovelier 

 should be the 2-inch 0. monophylla. with blossoms of pale pink, and 

 by no means to be denied oneself as an experiment. There is a point 

 at which caution becomes cowardice ; and another at which vain con- 

 fidence turns into courage ; one is apt, amid the winter wets of York- 

 shire, to imagine the glare of the Cape, and sicken sympathetically at 



mere thought of subjecting an Oxalis to such a change ; on the 



other hand, in summer heat the spirit mounts until no Wood-sorrel 



us hopeless or foolhardy to attempt. Of two at least a solid tale 



of satisfaction can everywhere be told ; these are 0. enntaphylla and 



0. adenophytta. The first occupies the Falklands, there forming masses 



and long trunks of queer rhizomes that add each year at the end a 



little scaly bulb like that of some miniature Lilium auratum, until 



at la hole long rope of knubbly beads, sending up, in 



nature, its leaf-tuft from the youngest. In the garden, in rich soil 



in a cool and shady (but often in an open and sunny) crevice of the 



rock-work 0. I eaphyUa thrives and increases prodigiously from 



mer with a mass of sumptuous and finely- 



26 



