PHLOX. 



Ph. stolonifera often appears in catalogues as Ph. reptans and Ph. 

 verna. It may at once be known by its unique habit of emitting runners 

 and rooting stolons, the whole growth being rather clammy-downy, and 

 the prostrate long, weak branches set with pairs of oval leaves, which 

 are quite large about the base of the red flower-stems that rise up 

 here and there, but much smaller on the runners. The stems are 

 some 6 inches high, and set with, here and there, a pair of small oval 

 leaves ; at their top is a loosely branched head of large and lovely 

 rose-carmine blossoms in spring before the others, and very often again 

 in autumn. Ph. stolonifera has all-round charm, the stalks uprising 

 at intervals from the carpet of runners, making far less of a crowd and 

 giving far more of an effect to both groundwork and blossom alike 

 than in some of the other species, where only a dense clump or mat is 

 formed. This favourite joy comes from the damper woods in Alleghany, 

 Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Georgia ; and in the garden is of the 

 easiest culture, sheeting any good space of soil with the insatiate 

 ramification of its runners, thrown out in all directions from the flower- 

 stem's rosette, after the hen-and-chickens fashion affected by Androsace 

 sarmentosa. The only note to make is one of caution against the con- 

 fusion of some catalogues, which, besides often calling it " reptans " 

 or " verna," seem to think that it is the same thing as Ph. procumbens. 

 It stands apart from all in its stoloniferous habit, and the others are 

 sufficiently differentiated, each' in his several place. 



Ph. subulata. — There is no end to the kindliness and glory of this 

 little Flame, whether we have to thank it in whiter for the cheery 

 shimmer of its wide mats of green, or in early summer for the way in 

 which it conceals them from us with a carpet of comfortable full-faced 

 stars in an indistinguishable mass of snow or lavender-blue, or pink, 

 or vehement rose or lilac. The day that saw the introduction, more 

 than a century since, of Ph. subulata, ought indeed to be kept as a 

 horticultural festival ; for so hardy and so hearty is the plant, that 

 not even the timorous veneration of a hundred years ago could do it 

 harm, and it continued to survive even in the dank and gloomy hollows 

 of shelter then prescribed for a thing so precious, till at last the clouds 

 rolled by, and now it makes mats of loveliness over every high rock 

 of the garden in June. In America it has a general distribution 

 through the sandy, woody places of the Atlantic border (which is why 

 it came to us so much sooner than its tarrying Pacific sisters), and in 

 its range varies into many forms, of which the archetype is the one 

 called Ph. subulata ciliata, while the perfectly smooth-leaved, glossy 

 one is the variety Ph. subulata setacea, so that the species has often, 

 therefore, appeared in catalogues as being the same thing as itself, 



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