POTENTILLA. 



P. multifida may easily be recognised in the high non-calcareous 

 pastures of the Southern Alps by its little cottony-white leaves, which 

 are feathered and cut again and again into a number of small straight 

 toothless oblong strips. The branching cottony stems are about 5 or 

 6 inches high, or less, but the yellow flowers have no special interest 

 or brilliancy or size. 



P. nepalensis (P. forinosa) makes a large lax tangle with lush soft 

 silky leafage and straggling flower-stems of 2 feet or so in later summer. 

 All this, however, has to be forgiven for the sake of the blossoms, which 

 are big (though not outweighing the mass of the growth), and of brilliant 

 rose-crimson. It is, however, banished finally from the rock-garden 

 by its variety P. n. Willmottiae, which is really a most glorious form, 

 having flowers of the same amplitude, but of a more resplendent and 

 lucent vivid tender rose, on stems of*8 inches or half a foot, straggling 

 indeed this way and that, but so exactly balancing the silky foliage 

 that the mass has a neatness of port which makes it no less precious 

 in the upper ledges than do its lovely bright -faced flowers that stare 

 down in so serene a blush, making a specially beautiful combination 

 with the paler flesh-toned cups of Geranium lancastriense, and the 

 lavish china-blue bells of Campanula haylodgensis, all filling their 

 ledge or bed with a simultaneous chorus of beauty from July far on 

 into November, the Potentilla being the last stayer in the race. It 

 comes true from seed (or might even van* excitingly), and can be 

 otherwise multiplied by cuttings or division in spring. 



P. nevadensis in the great altitudes of the Sierra Nevada grows in 

 compact grey-green tufts an inch or two high, and in May emits a 

 quantity of fine prostrate shoots 3 or 4 inches long, and liberally 

 beset with three or four lovely orbed flowers of brilliant yellow. It 

 is a delightful species in the garden, too, where it does the same thing 

 handsomely, like all the others, in light loam and a sunny place. 

 There is also a most beautiful higher alpine form yet, called P. n. 

 condensata, which has the same display, but on much tighter tufts, 

 shining with a coat of pure and gleaming silver. 



P. nitida, however, is the glory of the race. All over the Eastern 

 limestone at high altitudes, it forms huge mats and masses and carpets 

 of small trefoiled foliage, purely silver and grey ; or hangs out in huge 

 ancient curtains from its woody trunk in the >tark limestone cliffs of 

 the Grigna, Baldo, or the Boe. (I have only once seen it on non-cal- 

 ms rock — one small and pallid-flowered mangy tuft, sad and in 

 exile, on the granites of the Ciina Torsoleto above the Val Camonica.) 

 And then, as if that refulgent moonlit carpet were not enough, it covers 

 all the mass with a close constellation of vivid rose-pink dog-roses, 



96 



