SPIRAEA. 



varieties of S. palmata, of the same or greater stature than tho yard-high 

 type, with blossoms in differing degrees of sweetness and light. These 

 are distinguished in eatalogues as S. p. elegans and the magnified 

 S. p. maxima. And quite eloso to this stands S. purpurea, whoso 

 name must arouse no false anticipations, for it belongs to the brown- 

 purple veinings with which the leaves are blurred and diversified, 

 while the fine foam-heads of flower are pink as in all theso last, and 

 with the leaves up the stems of tho same ample verge and pointed 

 lobes. And finally, in this group there is our own S. FUipendula, with 

 a taller ;md handsomer form with double flowers, and also a pink one ; 

 this likes much drier and sunnier places than tho rest, and on many 

 a sunny down of England may be seen making a rosette of finely 

 feathered and ferny dark green leaves, springing from the ground in 

 their rosette, and rather like those of an unsilvered PotenUlla anserina, 

 until it has sent up its slim and nearly naked stem, breaking into a 

 wide foam of cream-white bloom in early summer. Soe Appendix. 



Of shrubs in this race there is no end, and, with China now emptying 

 over us its shoe as if we were Edom, their number is daily increasing 

 as their desirability and distinctness lessen with their multiplication. 

 Here there is no place for such ; all catalogues that sell them suffi- 

 ciently commend and describe them. But 8. crispifolia (often 

 appearing in the same list as S. bullata, as if the two names meant two 

 plants instead of only one) is a valuable bushling for an effective 

 corner of the rockwork, very stiff and upstanding in habit, with 

 many little stark boughs, beset with stark dark rough leaves, strangely 

 blistered and twirled and quirled, and ending in many small dim 

 heads of flowers of fluffy pink in later summer, the whole thing not being 

 more than some 10 inches or a foot at the most. Much more in the 

 way of the rock-garden, however, is S. caespitosa, which breaks away 

 from the traditions of all the rest, and makes denso wide mats of 

 silvered undivided little narrow leaves (like those of an Antennaria 

 dioica that has lost much of its silver), in any sunny well-drained place 

 in perfectly light stony soil or moraine ; and from this, from early 

 summer onwards, sends up spikelings of fluffy whito bloom on stems 

 of not more than a few inches. This is an American, as is also 

 another pleasant thing, often called Eriogyna pectinata, but in reality 

 S. pectinata, however little it may look it. This is Mrs. Sprat to Caespi- 

 tosa 's Jack ; for it likes cool moist soil hi a rather shady situation, 

 where it forms tufts of very lino and ferny shining green foliage, 

 rathe] ing Saxifraga hyp nut-ides, and emitting runners, with 



tuti- of Leav< s, that strike root and widen the colony ; tho spikes of 

 woolly-white flowers come up on stems of a few inches in summer, 



378 



