RANUNCULUS. 



the summer. It is a treasure for shallow waters, where it can have 

 free room to run wild. 



R. Lyattii is always ardently talked of. It belongs usually to high 

 glacial places of the New Zealand Alps, where it grows in banks of 

 rich loose silt, or in the black mountain soil, on slopes that are torrid 

 bogs in the summer and frozen snow-fields all the winter. In habit 

 it is stout and stalwart, with big, glossy, scalloped leaves (on sturdy 

 stems), leathern and dark and round ; and an 18-inch stalk that breaks 

 into a wide shower of many-petalled white flowers that, as a rulo in 

 England, do not seem quite large enough for the general dimensions of 

 the plant, and suggest a loosely-wired bunch of R. crenatus, stuck up 

 above the tropical foliage of Caltha polypetala, on the top of a tall 

 stalk. It is not at all easy, either, seeming to require a consistency of 

 temperature such as our artistically erratic climate cannot admit ; 

 however, it will thrive quite as well, either as it deserves, or as its 

 grower, after experience of it, desires, in very deep, rich, chippy, 

 gritty, and well-drained peaty loam on a sunny or sheltered slope, 

 with abundant water flowing beneath throughout the growing season, 

 until the plant dies down into its fat great tuberous rhizome to rest 

 for the winter (when it must lie dry, on pain of rotting). There is 

 also a smaller varietj^, R. L. Traversii, with cream-coloured flowers, 

 and as the species is splendid enough to elicit notice oven from the 

 most inexperienced colonist, it is to be charitably hoped that we have 

 either not yet succeeded in importing the finest type, or have not 

 yet succeeded in making it show its fineness. 



R. macrophyllus is a big, tall, and noble-flowered yellow species 

 from the Caucasus, with kidney-shaped leafage hewn into three or 

 five lobes, and clad hi a close coat of hair, on notably long foot-stalks. 



R. magellensis can only be seen in the high places of the Central 

 Apennines, especially on the Majella (with a variety, R. m. arcuatus, 

 on Monte Sirente in the Abruzzi). It is a smaller local sub-species of 

 R. crenatus, with long-stalked, deeply, amply, and irregularly scalloped 

 little dark leaves, which, with their gloss and their lobes at the base 

 on either side of the stem, approach nearly to R. bilobus, and establish 

 a link between this, the calcareous species, and R. crenatus of the 

 schists and granites. In cultivation it is quite easy under the rich- 

 and moist-soil conditions that suit the other two, than which it is 

 usually smaller in habit, and most attractive with its white flowers, 

 with petals nearly as dog-rosy as in R. bilobus. 



R. Marschlinsii is a spindly yellow gawk of no merit, with in- 

 finitesimal stars, closely akin to R. demissus, but fortunately peculiar 

 to damp fields in Corsica. 



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