POTENTILLA. 



is called on to diagnose every name, lest he should by chance be missing 

 a good one. Not so we ; out of much disappointment and much 

 laborious study, I will first compile a list of such Potentillas as seem 

 secondary or tertiary in their claims for admittance to the garden ; 

 and then we will proceed to sift the rest. It may well be that the list 

 will contain some plants upon whom such a condemnation unjustly 

 rests ; but it will, probably, also be found on experiment that they 

 are not, even if as good, any better than some species such as P. alpes- 

 tris which have the first claim, and which the discarded cousins so 

 closely resemble that the garden which finds room for the one would 

 be overcrowded if it began to include all the species that take after it. 

 For if few families are so large, also few are so unoriginal and repetitive ; 

 every country has a range of Potentillas representing a similar range 

 across the border, separated indeed by sufficient botanical differences, 

 yet all in a ruck of demerit for the garden ; yet all no less paraded in 

 full catalogues of the species, to the undoing of the wretched gardener 

 who has no inner light of knowledge to tell him by instinct what to 

 choose, yet at present no help from outside to save him from putting 

 his last half-crown on what has looked like a dark horse indeed in a 

 list, but soon turns out to have been an absolute wrong 'un. Here, 

 then, is a provisional list of such Potentillas as it may possibly prove 

 useful and even helpful to avoid : PP. bifurca, coriandrifolia, sericea, 

 desertorum, kashmirica, pteropoda, monanthes, Clarkei, Mooniana, 

 G-riffithii, leuconota, peduncularis, glomerate, viridescens, diversifolia, 

 decurrens, glaucophylla, Nuttallii, gracilis, glutinosa, fissa, glandu- 

 losa, pseudorupestris, argute, Convallaria, fiabelliformis , pinnatisecta, 

 Meyeri, mollissima, de Tommasii, collina, lazica, heptaphylla, opaca, 

 adenophylla, Bungei (many of these last being nice things, but inferior 

 to P. verna), pannosa, radiata, argyroloma, nuda, geranioeides (secon- 

 dary to P. alpestris), pimpinelloeides, poteriifolia, elvendensis, sericea, 

 argaea, hirte, recta, inclinata, pennsylvanica. So is the ground en- 

 cumbered for the gardener's feet ; not all of these are weeds absolute, 

 but certainly weeds comparative by the side of the best ; and the best, 

 the best alone, is what the wise gardener alone has room for, when it 

 comes to coping, in ground not conterminous with wide earth, with 

 a race so enormous yet so monotonous as this of the Potentillas. And 

 now, here follows a brief annotated list of the more possible species 

 — very many more are to be found in some very catholic lists, but 

 whether more possible or not who shall say ? For the lists don't. 

 See Appendix. 



P. adjarica, 8 inches, with yellow flower. No special use. 



P. agrimonioeides, of half the height and half the use. 



