POLYSCHEMONE NIVALIS. 



at the edges, from which arises, in May or June, one single stem of 

 3 inches or so, almost bare, and ending in a long spike of tiny, white, 

 starry flowers, which arc replaced, half-way down the stalk, by glossy 

 mahogany bulbils or bulbillules, from which it can at pleasure 

 be propagated. It is an abundant species of the upper alpine 

 meadows, and no less common in the alpine meadows of England, 

 where it occurs, as, for instance, in the fields round the High Force, 

 which so lavishly back up their imitation of alpine pastures by making 

 Viola lutea, in colour and abundance, if not in size, take up the role 

 of Viola calcarata in painting the distances with purple-and-golden 

 veils, amid which stand finely up the little white lances of the Poly- 

 gonum. 



Polyschemone nivalis = Lychnis nivalis, q.v. 



Pontederia cordata is a handsome water-plant from North 

 America, for a warm corner in a pool of some 12 or 18 inches deep 

 (that it be fully protected from frost). It throws up swathes of long, 

 glaucous leaves, narrow-oval, at the ends of tall stems ; and then, 

 in very late summer and autumn, 3-foot stalks, with spires of fine 

 blue blossom. If the water be shallow, or the climate cold, bracken 

 should be piled about the roots in winter to keep them safe. 



Potentilla. — This race may be said, in a way, to own the privilege 

 of having given birth to this book. Into so swirling and mid a sea 

 does the name plunge us, and with no faintest hint of a lifeline, that 

 my many years of suffering over unannotated lists of Potentillas in 

 catalogues had long made me yearn for some handbook that should 

 cope concisely with these and similar obscurities. Few races are 

 larger, and certainly few more largely quoted. Catalogues are filled 

 with strings of Potentilla-names, stretching out into infinity like the 

 Pharaohs, and each with no more individuality to the uninstructed. 

 In this family, then, where jewels are concealed in such a frippery of 

 worthless brass, how is the gardener to know the one from the other 

 by nature's bare and insufficient guidance ? I turn up M. Correvon's 

 new work, and I read this : — "VI. ; 20 c : jaune vif ; Eur ; I ; 3 " — 

 a most searching problem in algebra, evidently, or Rule of Three, or 

 • other high mystery of mathematics; but how, out of this unen- 

 lightening Abracadabra, is the unenlightened to learn that the species 

 thus compendiously pictured is P. anserina, one of the commonest of 

 weeds, and one of the most fatal to admit to the garden ? Yet no 

 race is harder to deal with, for the average is good, and there are many 

 kinds only to be disregarded because they are inferior to the best that 

 they so closely resemble. Yet this generic resemblance is at once the 

 weakness of the race, and the trouble of the describer, who feels that he 



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