PUSCHKINIA. 



muddle-headed about the colour of its flowers : P. mollis, from Siberia ; 

 P. etyriaca, dimly purple-blue ; and P. tuberosa, of a reddish violet. 



Puschkinia.— These are lovely little bulbs of the Levant, with 

 stems of 3 inches or more in spring, and rather large china-blue 

 flowers in loose spikes, lined with a richer shade, and so of the loveliest 

 effect of pale-blue blown glass in the ample bell. P. scilloeides is the 

 best known ; P. Ubanotica is larger in the bloom, and P. hyacinthoeides 

 (from the highest snows of Kurdistan) is tho smallest of all and the 

 palesl in blue. All thrive easily in light sunny soil. 



Putoria calabrica is worth the pains of cosseting in light soil 

 in an especially warm and sheltered spot between sumiy rocks, in 

 order that it may remember the cliffs of Spain and Greece and remain 

 with you as a hardy perennial, forming more and more of a delicate 

 flopping bush of 10 inches or so, with narrow shining leaves, and 

 heads of wax-pink trumpets all the summer through, as largo and 

 fine as in Daphne Cneorum (but emitting u lpleasant instead of celestial 

 odours), and followed by black berries from which the plant may be 

 raised anew, if not, in England, more surely propagated from careful 

 cuttings. 



Pycnanthemum lanceolatum will prosper in dry shady 

 places of the copse, where it will throw out 18-inch or yard-high stems 

 beset with whorls of little white or purplish labiate flowers. This 

 is a North-American, finely hairy, aromatic, and also called Koellia 

 virginica. but under no name a thing of especial value. 



Pyrethrum is almost the same, if not quite, as Chrysanthemum. 

 P. roseum, however, from the alpine and sub-alpine fields of Pontus 

 and Caucasus, is the parent of all our garden forms ; P. fruticidosum is 

 a very branchy, woody, dense bushling from the upper Alps of Asia 

 Minor, with flowers as in Chrysanthemum alpinum ; P. Kotschyi shares 

 the cliffs of Berytagh with the last, and is a perfectly compact little 

 mound of small, silky, finger-cut leaves, from which stand out the largo 

 white marguerites ; P. nivale has many stems of 6 inches or a foot, 

 gracefully rising this way and that, smooth and bluish-grey, and bare 

 only at the top, where they each carry one wide white daisy ; and 

 there are countless others to name, though these are the chief of 

 those that carry one blossom to the stem. The best of them, perhaps, 

 is P. carneum (Chrys. coronopifolium) , with bigger flowers of the 

 same pink as in P. roseum, both being of the same value as insecticides ; 

 and P. densum, with heaps of dense and soft -grey velvety curled foliage. 

 All are of easy culture in light open soil, and may at pleasure be 

 pulled to pieces or struck as cuttings, or raised from seed, according to 

 their habits. 



