PULMOXARIA. 



oval, small and neat ; and the mass is covered with clusters of the 

 most beautiful bright flowers of purple and pink in spring. 



Pi. pyrenaicum makes a loose mass about 10 inches through. 

 springing from a woody trunk about an inch thick. The base of the 

 lax cushion is thick with fat leathern obovate foliage, above which 

 aspire the dense spikes of large white blossoms., arising from the branches 

 of 3 or 4 inches that break from the main shoots and form the silver- 

 scaly, woody, tortuous bushling. It is a fine species, but of the greatest 

 rarity, to be seen here and there in the sheer precipices of Catalonia 

 and the Eastern Pyrenees. 



Pt. spinosum. — This is the favourite commonplace called in gardens 

 Alyssum spinosum. It forms neat thorny masses that may be nearly 

 a foot high, and many more across, hidden in time by sheets of little 

 white blooms suggesting those of Koeniga maritima (which also used 

 to be Alyssum) ; it luxuriates on warm dry soils and exposures, and 

 there is a pretty variety, Pt. -sp. roseum, in which the flowers have a 

 varying flush of faint lilac or pink, most attractive, even if not quite 

 deserving this high epithet so often charitably extended (by kind 

 catalogues) to cover even the faintest of mauve blushes. 



Pulmonaria will not easily find a lovelier representative than 

 the narrow-leaved brilliant Spotted-dog of the Dorsetshire woods, with 

 its 6- or 8-inch stems, and its hanging lovely bugles of rich clear blue in 

 April — so much more modest in the leaf, well-bred in the growth, and 

 brilliant in the flower than the towzled and morbid-looking heaps of 

 leprous leafage made by the common Lungwort of gardens, with 

 leafy stems and indecisive heads of dim pinky-blue flowers that 

 look as if they were going bad. This is sometimes P. aaccharata of 

 the Southern ranges, a species of even startling foliage-beauty when 

 you come upon the marvellous and awful mottlings and splashed 

 whitenesses of its lush leaves in the woods, for instance above the 

 Boreon, seeming as if some Suffragette had been liberal in those parts 

 with vitriol. But the flowers are grievous. P. azurca (Bt-. ifi 

 simply P. angustifolia, of which English woods have one form, perhaps 

 the best, and the upper Alps another ; P. " aruernensis " of catalogues 

 is one of its developments, and so are the white and the pink onts sold 

 simply as P. alba and P. rubra — leafy things all, but of clear-coloured 

 beauty in early spring (and even into summer), and perfectly easy of 

 culture anywhere in cooler soils and aspects, positively rejoicing in 

 division. Others of much less clarity of tone and general merit are 

 P. officinalis, often the Spotted-dog or Jerusalem Cowslip of gardens. 

 and probably no more than a poor form or sub-species of P. angusti- 

 folia. larger, broader and limper in the leaf, as well as much more 



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