POLEMONIUM. 



and size of blossom. Our own Jacob's Ladder holds up its head with 

 the best ; a species of sub-alpine copses in the North of England, 

 and eminently able to take care of itself in the garden, and see to 

 its own propagation. The Albino is beautiful too, and the plant 

 called P. sibiricum is only a cultivated form of P. coeruhum. See 

 Appendix. 



P. confertum brings us to a choicer group, where care is asked. It 

 has a vigorously-shooting little stock, creeping across the face of the 

 ground, and emitting tufts of small glandular sticky leaves, composed 

 of countless leaflets tucked and packed together in whorls as it were, 

 till the whole leaf has the effect of a broad fat shoot of Galium. On 

 fine stalks of their own do these wave, but on fine stems of about 

 double their height do the flower-stalks aspire, with a little leaf or so 

 to clothe them, to the height of 6 or 8 inches, and then unfold a very 

 dense head of the most beautiful wide-eyed ample saucer-bells of clear 

 rich blue. It is a treasure from the highest Alps of the Rockies and 

 the California!) Sierra Nevada ; in the garden it wants light and specially 

 well-drained ground, with sufficiency of subterraneous water in early 

 summer as a counsel of perfection ; though it will be quite happy and 

 perennial in a mixture of chips and rich soil, stony almost to the point 

 of being moraine. Unless it can be kept from thirst it will not usually 

 enjoy being sun-burnt excessively, though by no means averse from 

 the light of day. It is one of the loveliest of the whole race, either 

 sticky or smooth, and far preferable to its variety, P. c. mellitum, 

 which is so much commoner in gardens and catalogues. This has 

 flowers of a soft bluish-white ; the whole plant is taller and the 

 spike laxer, and the look of brilliancy and distinction diminished, — 

 though by no means destroyed, for the clustered pale tubes of P. c. 

 mellitum, in their close ample sprays, have much elegance and charm, 

 though they miss the concision and the clear rich colour of the type — 

 of which, for the rest, it has the needs and habit, though forming 

 more of a clump than the mat into which P. confertum will tend to 

 expand if happy. It also smells so violently of beer that, when 

 exhibited, it makes its cultivator an object of deep suspicion in 

 abstaining circles. 



P. Ehrenbergii is a spreading species of about 8 inches high from the 

 mountain woods of Mexico, where its branches spread about, carrying 

 two or three very large and bell-shaped yellow flowers at their top. 



P. eximium is a taller plant of a foot high from Rio Grande, all 

 clad in glandular down, with leaflets in whorls on the leaves, and un- 

 branching stems that end in a pyramid of golden blossoms, which, 

 however, in the variety P. e. Lambornii, are of a livid red. 



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