STACHYS. 



and the plant is a treasure for the cool damp rockery, although it is 

 so much a traitor in deserting the traditions of Spiraea in order to 

 plagiarise the prettiness of a lax-growing Mossy Saxifrage. Much 

 the most lovely, however, of all the Spiraeas we at present possess in 

 the rock-garden is S.decumbens, sometimes also sent out as S.Hacquettii. 

 This is a true shrub, and a perfect miniature of S. arguta, but not more 

 than 3 or 4 inches high, running finely about among the sunny stony 

 places of the limestone screes of the Dolomites, with little arching 

 shoots set delicately with small and well-proportioned toothed grey 

 leaves, and bearing loose gaiaxies of milk-pure stars throughout the 

 summer on bending sprigs and elegantly-spaced sprays of 4 or 5 inches, 

 half flopping and half standing, but alwaj-s of incomparable charm 

 and sweetness of aspect. This most lovely little species runs freely 

 about with underground roots, and, in ledge or slope of the well-built 

 rock-work in a sunny place and light limy soil or moraine, soon 

 forms colonies of a foot across and more, never crowded, but always 

 inimitably graceful in the wiry archings of its fine frail wiry stems, 

 beset with such small blue-grey leaves, and so lavish in the sprayed 

 loveliness of the snow-pale flowers. 



Stachys. — This family of Hedge Nettles, like so many of the 

 Labiates, is much too generally coarse and dowdy for the rock-garden, 

 usually with woolly fat fohage, and whorled spikes of dull dead- 

 nettle-flowers on gawky fat stems hi summer and autumn. There are, 

 however, two plants of preposterous merit emerging unexpectedly in 

 this coarse dim race (catalogues can chant the charms of the rest). 



S. Corsica is completely dwarf and neat and green, forming a wide 

 and very quickly-spreading dense carpet of sliming emerald little leaves, 

 close upon which through all the summer sits such a profusion of large 

 and blushing flowers that the whole mass becomes and remains a 

 sheeted field of soft and creamy flesh-pink, clear and pure and fine 

 in texture as well as in colour. It can obviously be multiplied at any 

 moment to any extent ; it is faithfully hardy, but likes a dry sunny 

 place in specially well-drained light loam, where it can have room to 

 spread into a carpet so close and thick and wide that fairies might give 

 a dance there among the untenable multitudes of those flowers, tinged 

 to warmth like the first promise of the sun on far-off snowy ranges. 

 Taller than this is S. lavandulaefolia from the Caucasus, and in need 

 of the same sunny situation and light soil on tho rockwork, where it 

 forms creeping woody masses of shoots and subterranean runners, 

 sending up prostrate stems that make a dense tuft of grey velvety 

 foliage, from which spring whorled spikes of purplish-red flowers in 

 summer. 



379 



