RUBUS. 



and more serene, shining with a solemn and unearthly radiance as 

 the blossoms, like ghostly butterflies of light, hover pale and vivid 

 upon the background of dark pine-branches and fern-frond that 

 makes the best setting for the plant's beauty ; their presence affords 

 the comfort and surroundings that its health most enjoys. And this 

 sudden leap of Roscoea from dullness into the heights of glory is not 

 made solely by R. cautlioeides, for it has a sister as yet unpublished, 

 precisely twin in size and habit, but with flowers of a rich and brilliant 

 vinous purple. 



Rubia Aucheri, a 6-inch plant like an Asperula, with creeping 

 spreading root, and whorled foliage topped by scantily furnished 

 heads of blossom in summer. It comes from the Levant, and should 

 have the treatment of the Asperulas, to which it is related. 



Rubus. — Upon England has China in these latter days cast 

 forth from all her hedgerows and highway-sides so appalling a collec- 

 tion of invasive and hideous great brambles that we have given up 

 all effort to say pleasant things about them (as at first their cultivators 

 pathetically and piously attempted), and have even developed an 

 undiscerning general disgust, in consequence, with the whole misguided 

 country that has burdened us with such horrors. For the rock- 

 garden, however, there are some pleasant and quite small brambles, 

 all well suited in a sunny but not parched place in stony peaty loam. 

 R. arcticus from the far North, that once was thought to have lodg- 

 ment in Scotland, is an erect little running raspberry of 6 inches or so, 

 with large cheery pink flowers, followed by fruits no less exhilarating 

 in their own way. Care should be taken, however, to got the fruit- 

 bearing form of the plant, which is sold as R. a.fecundus. R. saxatilis, 

 a common species of our Northern limestones, is hardly worth a place, 

 though neat and modest ; and no one seems ever for long or thoroughly 

 to succeed with the Cloudberry, though on the moors of Ingleborough 

 and all the North it makes carpets of many a hundred-yard width, 

 with its one or two broad-lobed leaves on the upstanding stem of 

 4 or 5 inches, which first bears up a single erect white blossom, and 

 then replaces it with a succulent fruit, which is of a golden amber when 

 ripe, like a very big and large-carpelled Raspberry, with the sharp 

 sweetness of the Pomegranate. This is the staple jam-fruit of the 

 Scandinavian moors, but the Cloudberry, though so placid a native of 

 our high places, seems almost more reluctant to descend from its 

 ridiculous molehills and be happy in the garden, than does the King 

 of the Alps himself from the great mountains of the world. And, 

 finally, there are the Bush-lawyers of New Zealand — terrible spiny 

 affairs with long thin arms beset with millions of minute but efficient 



(1,996) 225 II.— p 



