NUPHAR, NYMPHAEA, AND NELUMBIUM. 



much care never seem to make it happy at all. What is indicated, 

 however (generally speaking), is a gentle sunny slope of very rich, but 

 light and open loam, well-watered from beneath ; in gardens where the 

 sun's heat is southern, it might be better that the slope should turn 

 away from it, but probably Nierembergia has no objection to sun in 

 itself, and merely dislikes being parched ; so that abundant water would 

 give it all its needs in open ground or shade. It can most readily be 

 divided, as it rapidly forms wide dense carpets ; but it is too often 

 pulled pitilessly to pieces for the market, which is the reason of many 

 failures with specimens so sickened of division that their only remain- 

 ing thought in life is to fold their leaves in slumber and pass into the 

 peace of death, where the trowel will no more trouble, nor the spade 

 divide. There are others of this lovely race, but none to be trusted in 

 our climate ; though in warm places success is met with in dealing 

 with the no less beautiful but wholly different N. frutescens, which 

 suggests a fine spraying Flax-bush with bigger, blue-white flowers, 

 darkened at the eye, and delight fulty abundant through summer. 



Noaea spinosissima expresses in the first syllable of its name, 

 what the wise gardener will say when offered it. Nor need he even 

 trouble to add " Thank you." 



Noccaea alpina is Hutchinsia alpina, and N. siylosa is Thlaspi 

 stylos um. 



Nothoscordon fragrans. See under Allium. 

 Notothlaspi rosulatuxn.— The Penwiper plant of New Zealand 

 is a most beautiful shingle Crucifer of the high Southern Alps, where it 

 forms a penwiper of thick fat leaves, and then emits a dense and solid 

 pyramid about 9 inches high, of crowded large white flowers deliciously 

 fragrant. N. australe is no less snowy and sweet, but not so impres- 

 sive. They gloriously replace Thlaspi in the Antarctic screes. 



Nuphar, Nymphaea, and Nelumbium. — There is no need at 

 this time of day to expatiate on the glories of these, alike in foliage 

 and blossom. All Water-lilies are of the easiest culture, requiring 

 only to be planted at the bottom of a 3-foot pond, on mounds of grossly 

 rich soil, and there let alone to grow wide every year and glorify the 

 pool far on into autumn with their flowers in every gorgeous shade of 

 colour except, as yet, blue. So much for the larger Water-lilies ; the 

 smaller like a depth of 2 feet, and in the case of such babies as N. Hel- 

 vetia, a depth of 6 inches will be ample. And the Nuphars, too, dull 

 Brandy-bottles in flower, but superb in the leaf, may thrive in shallow 

 as in deeper waters (the upstanding foliage of the American species 

 so showing better). But Nelumbium should have a depth of nearly 

 a foot, and then, .in winter, its department of the pool should be filled 



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