PHYSARIA. 



of varying colour nearly an inch long, with dcepish clefts to the lobes, 

 in loose and few-flowered sprays. (South Arizona.) 



Ph. tri flora = Ph. o 



Ph. variabilis is a dwarf mat-forming species from the Colorado 

 Rockies, with the Leaves flat and pointed, and fringed with longish 

 hairs, while the rest of the plant is rather bald, and the flowers sit 

 tight over the tuft by ones or twos. 



Ph. vema is a false name for Ph. stolonifera. q.v. 



Phyllodoke taxifolia is also Menziesia coerulea, and its 

 beauties have been hinted at under that head. There are others of 

 the race, all delicate bushlings of fine yew-like foliage, which eject 

 from the tips of their shoots a varying number of drop-shaped or 

 bubble-shaped flowers in pinks or lilacs, each hovering on a delicate 

 footstalk of its own. Ph. Pallasiana has more blossoms and shorter 

 stems to them than Ph. taxifolia ; and there is also, among the rest, 

 the most dainty little pink-belled Ph. nipponka, and the inferior 

 Ph. aleuticu. All these, indeed, are dainty things, and for the daintiest 

 treatment, lest they too poignantly remember the cool, arctic air and 

 the conditions of their birth. They should have, then, a specially 

 gritty, stony peat, light and spongy, and perpetually kept moist from 

 below in summer, if they are to continue prosperous and long in the 

 land. There is no question of their propagation ; and their chime 

 of bells rings out in summer and late summer. 



Physalis. — After Phlox an I Phyllodoke, who will not be made sick 

 by the mere name of these rank and leafy weeds, with their ostenta- 

 tious '" Japanese Lanterns " of orange and red ? These are, of course, 

 the dismal sere decorations of whiter ; and any flower that allows its 

 corpses out for so grim a purpose can only be reckoned as a blackleg 

 in the floral Union, going out to illegitimate employment when all 

 decent plants are enjoying the night when no man can work ; and 

 earning by this treachery a place in the garden to which their rank 

 ugliness of summer would certainly not entitle them. 



Physaria. — An American race of small Crucifers close to Les- 

 querella and Vesicaria. for cultivation in dry soils and sunny places, 

 where they will bloom in spring, and then may occasionally, but not 

 by any means invariably, die ; and in any case can be abundantly 

 replaced from seed. Ph. didymocarpa has a leaf-tuft of quite singular 

 beauty, for the leaves are broad and oval, and clothed in pure shimmer- 

 ing silver. But they are also arranged round the rosette at rare 

 intervals, in flattened, inclined planes like the vanes of a wind-fan, 

 which gives the plant quite sufficient charm in itself, even did not the 

 rosette send up a spire of such handsome, clear-yellow flowers. There 



