RANUNCULUS. 



R. tfathewsii is .1 Bpl< adid New Zealander, very much in the way 

 of R. Lyallii, but with goiden flowers. It has the same habits and 

 exactions and doubts. 



/.'. millefoliatus is another bright and handsome field Buttercup, 

 after the fashion, and for the same treatment, as R. jlabellatus, and 

 with much the same range, though larger and more ample, with the 

 leaves even more elaborately feathered and feathered again. 



R. monspdiacus grows taller yet, about a foot high, with golden 

 flowers. 



I!, /iiontanus is almost universal in the Alps, and so variable a species 

 that although its average or poor forms deserve no more note than 

 7?. auricomus, R. bulbosus, R. reptans, or any other English weed of 

 the race that the garden thinks itself lucky if it can escape in the 

 ordinary course of nature, some of its neater, dwarfed, huge-flowered 

 alpine forms are well worth marking and collecting. There is a splendid 

 one called R. m. Yillarsii in the Western Alps, stunted in the growth, 

 and exaggerated in the golden sun of blossom ; but the observant eye, 

 among the ordinary types, no more worthy of the garden than any of 

 our field-weed Buttercups (though not so big in the growth or so small 

 in the flower), will be able, every now and then, to mark down varieties 

 for itself; for instance, an especially notable and royal rich-golden 

 dwarf lives hi the roadside gutters of the Dolomitenslrasse, on the 

 first violent coilings of the road on its way up to the heights of the 

 Pordoi from Canazei. This has flowers that make one think of Geum 

 rcjjtans, but that they are far brighter in their sheen, and far richer 

 in their gold. And there is a form with flowers pale and creamy, 

 called, of course, R. m. albus. 



R. nivalis is not alpine, but entirely Arctic, alike in Europe, Asia, 

 and America, where it descends a little down the Rockies. It is a 

 small species, with hardly more than one little five-lobed leaf on a 

 stalk at the base, with an Anemonoid frill of one or two more on 

 the 3-inch stems, that each carry a single yellow flower, large for 

 the stature of the plant. It should go into the moraine, if thought 

 worthy. 



R. nivicola cultivates the snows of the South Island of New Zealand, 

 and there makes tufts of stalked kidney-shaped leaves, cut into five 

 or seven lobes. The stems are slender and branching, the blooms large 

 and nf gulden yellow. 



R. nyssanus is a hairy-leaved, handsome thing that very soon runs 

 about and occupies a wide space of ground, whether in light soil and 

 full sun or moist soil and shade, filling it with fine furry -green foliage, 

 and sending up in June abundant foot-high stems of golden flowers, 



214 



