POLEMONIUM. 



blue tone and most dainty design, in loose and delicate showers. It 

 is of perfectly easy culture^especially in rather cooler soils and exposures, 

 and is a darling of slugs. There is an albino, and a form called in 

 gardens P. himalaicum, being more rightly to be styled P. r. himalay- 

 anum (a name which, if not mendacious, means a strange straying of 

 the species from its distribution far away in New York State, Missouri, 

 Minnesota, and Alabama), which is finer even than the type, having 

 larger blooms, though by their deepened colour they lose that lucid 

 flaming note of cool blue that is so lovely alike in bell-shaped P. reptans 

 and in the saucer-faced, white-throated P. pulcherrimum. 



P. Ricliardsonii is a name to be specially guarded against. We have 

 seen that P. Richardsonii is a false name for P. lanatum humile (which 

 is so good-tempered that it never loses its wool in any of its forms). But 

 P. humile is also a varietal name under the shadow of the much larger 

 and woolless P. pulcherrimum. What has happened then, is that the 

 two Humiles have got mixed, and catalogues have then continued 

 the mixture by raking in the name Richardsonii and making it a 

 synonym of P. pulcherrimum 's variety Humile, whereas it was really 

 a Bot. Mag. error for P. lanatum' 's ; with the result accordingly, that 

 for the name P. Richardsonii in all catalogues (and even in authorities 

 so much greater as Count Silva-Tarouca), you will get merely the 

 minor forms of P. pulcherrimum. And thankful enough you may well 

 be for them anyhow, for P. pulcherrimum in all variations is a hearty, 

 lovely treasure, and the Humile variety earns especial commendation 

 by blooming first of all in April and May, and then again in July and 

 August. Sj remember : there is no P. Ricliardsonii. 



P. rotatum must be invoked from Arctic North America, where it 

 forms a matted tuft, sending up a number of little stems 4 to 6 inches 

 high, striped, and sticky with glands, that break into loose showers 

 of round, open, blue blossoms, very beautiful, and better worth going 

 to Klondyke for than much fine gold. 



P. sibiricum. See under P. coeruleum. 



P. speciosum is a lovely tube-flowered alpine, from Mount Gar- 

 field in Colorado, &c, at about 12,000 feet ; it is probably a hybrid 

 between P. pulcherrimum and P. confertum. 



P. van Bruntiae lives in the mountain swamps, and is a hairless, 

 glandless stalwart, from 2 to 3 feet tall, with blue flowers. 



P. viscosum is a rare and precious high-alpine of the Pacific coast 

 ranges, between 9000 and 12,000 feet ; it is a neat, woody-stocked 

 rarity with tiny, tiny leaves made up of tiny, tiny packed leaflets, and 

 erect stems of 3 or 4 inches, all sticky like the leaves, and bearing 

 dense heads of large blue blossoms in the shape of noble expanding 



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