PARRYA. 



happiness in warm and swampy ground, though its growth is by far 

 too vigorous for choice company., and it must be put where it can be 

 unquestioned king of many square feet and almost yards, where it 

 forms a tangled jungle 3 inches high or so, perpetually twinkling with 

 multitudes of its light azure butterflies. And in any case, should 

 you suspect the caprices of your climate, you have no more to do than 

 to take off as many sprigs of Parochaetus as you please in autumn 

 and pot them up indoors. If not already rooted the}' will lose no time 

 in becoming so. 



Paronychia, a curious little race of creeping matted cousins of 

 the Pinks, that run about in the poorest dry and hot soil, with shoots of 

 small smooth leaves and bunches of minute flowers without any petals 

 at all. However, this lack is compensated by the bracts that enclose 

 them, which are fine and large, and bright silver-white, giving not 

 only the full effect of petals, but of exceedingly full and snowy petals 

 into the bargain. P. polygonifolia may be seen in the Alps ; but by 

 far the most beautiful are silver-headed P. Knpela from Istria, and P. 

 capitate from Spain, with very striking crowded heads of broad white 

 bracts looking most lovely on the minute little humble plant. There 

 is also a sub-species of this, P. serpylli folia, of the same brilliance, 

 but more perfectly prostrate, and with more rounded tiny leafage, 

 though the beauty of the pure glistening bracts remains the same. 

 This may be found in hot places in the South, as, for instance, on 

 Monte Toraggio in the Ligurian Alps ; it flowers like the rest in June, 

 should be raised from seed, and then propagated by cuttings, and 

 treated only to the hottest, driest foregrounds of the garden in worth- 

 less soil and near the level of the eye, a position which the charm of 

 this whole group will well repay, even apart from their secondary use 

 of making a carpet for rare little bulbs, Crocus and Daffodil, to peer 

 up through, in a moment when the Paronychias have not yet begun to 

 think of flowering. 



Parrya. — These are very near relations of Cheiranthus and Erysi- 

 mum, both attractive and useful in their way, the best known of 

 which is P. JJenziesii from the Rockies, which makes tufted rosettes 

 of narrow grey leaves on rather woody shoots of 2 or 3 inches or more, 

 and then in spring and early summer sends up spikes of flowers like 

 those of a lax purple Aubrietia. Cuttings should be taken of this, 

 and seed sown. It is of easy culture in any light open soil and in full 

 sun. More remote from our hands are the high Himalayan Parryas, 

 dangerously densely woolly things, of which one at least, P. macrocarpa, 

 has stiff blossom-spikes of 6 inches or a foot, while others are P. exscapa, 

 P. lanuginosa, and P. platycarpa. But perhaps the most to be longed 



43 



