PHYTEUMA. 



for a person of really sound and rock-bound root. In cultivation, 

 however, the plant most paradoxically drops all these principles at 

 once : we should expect the little mat -forming Phyteumata of tho 

 alpine turf to be very easy, and in point of fact they are rather difficult : 

 we should expect Ph. comosv.m to be the most paralysingly impossible 

 of its race, and it is in reality one of the easiest of all alpines. There 

 is. indeed, an immense fund of vitality stored in that stout fleshy root- 

 stock ; mutilate it as you may (and neither hammer nor crowbar nor 

 the rod of Moses will secure you perfect roots of more than one 

 Phyteuma out of a hundred), the fragments will push forth life, and 

 burgeon anew, and gradually get re-established. If you have a little 

 patience you will ere long be able to plant it out ; when, to your 

 surprise, this intractable species of the most unmaheable mountains 

 will show itself perfectly happy and robust, sitting in any deep soil of 

 limy rich loam on the rock-work, perfectly drained. Here it will 

 produce a pride of tuft and blossom unknown before, and not to be 

 repressed unless by the nemesis of slugs, who seize upon this new 

 prosperity and pursue it from afar, and seem to have a special nose for 

 it, and for its sake leap walls of zinc, as Romeo scaled the parapets of 

 Verona for his love. Having then got so far as this, you will now, if 

 the slugs permit, be able to adore those amethystine heads of wild 

 pale bottles in July, and afterwards collect the seed and lay founda- 

 tions for more. But, supposing the counsel were not such a mockery, 

 and the collector compelled to be only too thankful for what Phyteuma 

 he can get, I would urge him to have an eve for forms ; for often the 

 bottles are livid and sombre, or of a cold and bilious pallor that looks 

 as if they were designed for drinks that neither inebriate nor cheer ; 

 while now and then they are of so transparent an amethystine blue, 

 deepening to darker tones of translucent purple at their tip, that they 

 seem like carved jewels from long ago of T'ang or Sung, phials wrought 

 by great artists to hold the wine of ghostly ancestors, or the sacred 

 tears of the Emperor for Tai-Ch en the Beautiful. Let such then be 

 sought, and even if when found they prove impregnable, in the mere 

 sight of them the spectator will still be none the poorer for a beauty 

 that he has seen and worshipped, even without being able to drag it 

 down into the garden for the delight of vile creatures that walk upon 

 their bellies, and think of nothing I •' 



Ph. ••' '■■- Dot a species likely to trouble either traveller or 



gardener. It is too rare for the one, and too ugly for the other. It 



may possibly prove a large and very much coarsened form of Ph. 



phaericum, with much broader leaves abruptly cut short in such 



a wa '1 in three teetl i and two smaller, almost in a 



72 



