POLYGALA. 



trumpets. There is a variety of this, P. v. Grayanum, with longer 

 hairs on the calyx among the glands. 



Poly gala. — The brilliant Milkworts of the Alps have never come 

 to their own in culture, and probably have something ephemeral or 

 ghostly about their rootage. The race is a most crowded, difficult, 

 and complicated one, however, and the eyes of the gardener need not 

 stray far be} T ond the common English Milkwort that in the mountains 

 develops into a thing of tropical and orchideous gorgeousness, with 

 long spikes of large flowers in the most flaring tones of violet. And 

 there is also a very handsome P. nicaeensis, with violet blooms, that 

 ascends to some 2000 feet in the Maritime Alps, and is worth the 

 trowel ; as is another Southerner for a wall or sunny, hot place, P. alpes- 

 tris, though the name is so much in dispute, and so indiscreetly shared 

 among different members of the race, that perhaps the gardener had best 

 make his choice with his own eye in the mountains, without troubling 

 the pages of bewildering print. The value of the family, however, finds 

 its high water-mark in P. Cliamaebuxus and P. Vayredae. P. Chamae- 

 buxus is universal in all the lighter alpine woodland, with its sheeted 

 carpet of dark little evergreen leaves sparkled over almost all the year 

 by great butterflies of white and yellow, with wings of rose and crimson 

 especially deep after fertilisation, so that in the same flight may be 

 seen a dozen different tones. The type is variable, however, and the 

 Southern and Eastern ranges produce the glorious form, P. Oh. rhodop- 

 tera or atropurjmrea, in which the wings are always of the brightest 

 carmine, and the blossoms of size and brilliancy to match. And 

 other forms are sometimes offered by catalogues, P. Chamaebuxus 

 having an almost universal distribution throughout the main alpine 

 chains, and being of inordinate abundance, not at the greater 

 elevations, but in the woods and open places lower down. It is 

 extremely unpleasant to collect, wandering far and wide with 

 yards of naked fibre that strike no root ; once established, how- 

 ever, it thrives ardently in the garden in sandy peat or loam, 

 whether in sun or sliade, to such a pitch indeed as sometimes to be 

 degraded into serving for a border. It should instead be planted 

 in broad drifts for fine bulbs to come up through, and Pyrolas and 

 such old neighbours of the woodland to make common cause with. In 

 course of no long time, too, a garden specimen can be divided, for in 

 cultivation it no longer roams so readily far afield, but forms into neat 

 clamps and close stretches full of rootage that can easily be pulled to 

 pieces. And, in the garden also, the plant does not lose its perpetual 

 wakefulness ; even in middest winter some of the golden-winged white 

 butterflies, pink-tipped, are sure to be seen hovering doubtfully 



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