PLEUROPHYLLUM SPECIOSUM. 



a wandering Odysseus of an inch or two high, roaming far and wide 

 with fine thready fibres, and perking up every here and there from the 

 greyness in tufts and shoots of hairless paired leaflets, above which 

 hover the big pink Sweet Peas, each lonely on its fine stem, rejoicing 

 in the thought of not having to provide anybody but itself with green 

 peas. By a green pea, however, must it be ultimately introduced to 

 our notice, and in the moraine made happy enough to secure its 

 succession with more. 



Platycodon. — The Wide-Bells stand between Campanula and 

 Ostrowskia. They develop on a diminished scale the fat huge stock 

 of the latter, the fleshy glaucous foliage and stem ; and the big fat-faced 

 flowers of rich powder-blue have something of the same effect, except 

 that in the grandest of the race, P. grandiflorum, they are bulged and 

 ballooned in shape, borne in long sprays, opulent and splendid, and 

 the more precious that, like those of all the rest of the family, they 

 appear in latest summer when the garden is beginning to go into 

 mourning for the approaching departure of the Maiden. Other 

 species are P. glaucum, and P. autumnale ; their culture is of the 

 simplest, the only thing they dread being stagnant damp in winter 

 that corrodes the stout stock. But let them be planted in very deep 

 and well-drained light loam, and they will be perennially happy ; as 

 the tall-stemmed species are fleshy and stiff in the stalk, and often 

 nearly 2 feet high, they suffer the weight of their great flowers, and 

 should be established either on lofty ledges where they can flop and 

 fall with good effect, or in the neighbourhood (not under the shadow 

 of) light little bushes on which they can decline and rest their weari- 

 ness. (For in the rock-garden the stake should no more be seen than 

 now, for the present, it is in the Church.) The most valuable, however, 

 of all the species is, therefore, the one that needs no precautions ; 

 this is P. Mariesii, which makes a sturdy mass of 8- or 10-inch shoots, 

 so stocky and short that they need never flag, but bravely uphold their 

 noble open fleshy-looking bells throughout the autumn. There are 

 lighter, and darker, and white-flowered forms of all these ; they are 

 beauties of high worship in Japan, where the bulk of them are native ; 

 and may easily be raised from seed, and also multiplied by most careful 

 division, which, however, in fleshy-stocked plants is always best 

 avoided, as no one wants to break up a fine happy clump. 



Pleurophyllum speciosum is indeed a splendid plant, though 

 very far away at present from our hopes. For it dwells in the wet 

 places of the Auckland and Campbell Islands, ascending even into 

 their mountains in a dwarf and stunted form, but in the damps making 

 a superb growth of 2 or 3 feet high, its base wrapped in vast corrugated 



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