SMELOWSKYA CALYCIXA. 



successfully invaded England also. In cooler, moist er parts of the 

 rock-garden or waterside it promptly establishes itself, and seeds 

 with such profusion that it is soon far away in the water-meadows, 

 puzzling the cows. It is much to be wished that the same could be 

 said of 8. grandiflorum and S. filifolium, for these rare treasures have 

 a beauty that baffles words. They are both rush -leaved plants ; 

 S. grandiflorum is North-American, and likes cool peaty soil, where it 

 is soon at home, forming clumps, widening from a creeping root, of 

 delicate upstanding foliage of rich green, from the tallest of which, 

 some 6 or 9 inches high, the first lengthening of the days in February 

 elicits a succession of most noble hanging bells in a deep and flashing 

 imperial violet, shimmering and sheeny in the silken exquisiteness of 

 the texture, and continuing their succession far on into the spring and 

 early summer. It is so breath-taking a beauty in its byzantine magni- 

 ficence of colour and fineness of Coan texture, that one can hardly 

 turn away to look at the white variety, which is lovely and delicate 

 and lustrous in its way as a sunlit pearl in dreamland. But she has 

 not yet, in her lucent satin, won to the yet serener grace of the Fair 

 Maid of the Falklands, who more suggests the pale and gentle ghost 

 of Desdemona or Deianeira — a frail exquisite growth of those gaunt 

 moors and rolling stretches, smaller and finer than the last (but for 

 the same treatment in cool peaty soil, with abundance of chips and 

 drainage), darker in its tone of green, and with a stature of 6 inches or 

 so. It hangs out wide diaphanous bells of a white so delicate that they 

 seem fairy cups of blown glass, freaked and lined with dark threads 

 fused in the hyaline texture of the crystal as it sprang from the pipe 

 of that dark rush-like stem, and swelled into a goblet, and now swims 

 delicately in the air, as if it were a bubble about to float loose from its 

 moorings, and set sail home to fairyland. There are various other hardy. 

 and many more half-hardy, Sisyrinchiums (such as rush-like S. odoratis- 

 simiun. with trusses of pale and deliciously sweet long tubes of white 

 blossom, at the top of the green and milky stems): but after 8. grandi- 

 florum and S. filifolium they fall into a huddled dim crowd behind, 

 among the obscurer ruck. And it may wisely be remembered that 

 an unknown Sisyrinchiom may often prove to be a Marica lurking in 

 ambush for the unwary. 



Smelowskya calycina (or americana) is a close and charm- 

 ing high-alpine Crucifer, from the Rockies, making dense cushions of 

 leaves an inch or two in length, and finely, sharply feathered ; close 

 among which sit short close spikes of pink or white blossoms, each 

 about half an inch across, and with the petals clawed at the base. 

 This shall go into the choice moraine. 



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