SAMOLUS. 



here it is not possible or fitting to deal with tho large species, it may 

 be said that even the rock-garden may be glad of dainty vermilion 

 S. Soulici, neat in habit, too, though not to be trusted as hardy; 

 no less than in the beautiful grey-leaved bush with feathered leaves 

 (for a sunny dry bank) of 8. ringens, from which shoot tall stems 

 in late summer, carrying very large whorled flowers of soft lilac- 

 blue, with a delicate contrast in the white lip. A little smaller than 

 this is S. scab iosaefolia with helmets of violet. Another plant greatly 

 to be desired, and always most rare, is S. bicolor from Spain and North 

 Africa, 2 or 3 feet high, branching. The flowers are in whorls of six, 

 the whorls being many and close together, but with the blossoms 

 standing out on longish foot-stalks ; they are nobly large with a 

 big white lip, and a hood of violet-blue, dotted with gold. 8. 

 Ubanotka also has fine flowers of blue, spotted with white, while of 

 low-growing species there are several, though 8. acaulis proved so 

 far a dismal fraud, sending up a gawky stem of a foot or so from the 

 basal rosette, and studding it with whorls of insignificant little flowers 

 at that. By the feet of Allad'agh, 5000 feet up in Cappadocia, fives 

 8. eriophora, w T ith very wrinkly narrow leaves and a great number of 

 woolly bluish fine stems of 6 inches or so, carrying close-set whorls of 

 handsome blue blossom in woolly calyces ; S. frigida (8. oreades), 

 from Anatolian Alps, is about the same height, and also has blue 

 flowers ; 8. caespitosa, from the same alpine regions, is densely tufted 

 and sub-shrubby, yet closely dwarf, with stems of only 3 or 4 inches, 

 clad to their top in feathered foliage, with splendid purple helmets 

 in a scanty head, sitting amid the leafage at the top of each shoot, so 

 that the whole wide mass of the plant is a carpet of flower. 



Samolus, a race of small Primulas that are not satisfied with 

 their family, and try to look as much like Shopherd's-purse as possible, 

 or Kernera saxatilis. One is universal, 8. Valerandi ; and, as we have 

 it wild, we have scant need to burden our gardens with it. The rest 

 are all hopeless of cultivation, even were they worthy, with the ex- 

 ception of 8. repens (Sheffieldia repens), which by no means creeps, 

 but stands more or less erect, with terminal clusters of little pinky 

 stars. It has countless forms, and comes mainly from Australia, 

 and may be coped with, if considered worth the trouble, in moist warm 

 places, where it will flower in summer and may perhaps have cuttings 

 struck, or Beed sown, in case it dies in winter. 



Sanguinaria canadensis, the Bloodroot of Canada, is a lovely 

 thing tor planting about under deciduous trees, and in good out-of-the- 

 way comers among Dog's-tooth Violets and so forth, where Spring, 

 from the solid creeping fat root (so susceptible to sorrow that it weeps 



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