TOFIELDIA. 



smaller frailer species from Bhotan and Nepal, of noted daintiness, 

 indeed, but not, like T. cordifolia, combining extreme elegance with 

 indestructible vigour and ubiquity. 



Tofieldia. — This is a family of minute bog-Asphodels, with 

 small fluffy spires of greeny-yellow flowers on stems of 4 or 5 inches. 

 T. palustris {T. borealis) may bo seen in the alpine marshes of Teesdale, 

 and the larger taller T. calyculata in all the wet meadows of the Alps ; 

 and there are smaller species, such as T. alpina (a variety of T. caly- 

 cukUa), T. glacialis, and T. rubescens. They are all quite without 

 showiness, but have a certain charm of their own for those who 

 remember the alpine marshes, and in their own would like to repeat 

 the effect. A very wei and \ ry loose gritty spongy soil is that in 

 which the Tofieldias will be happy. 



Tollmiaea Menziesii is a small and rather dowdy Saxi- 

 fragaceous W i lander from California, striking a compromise between 

 Heuchera and !Mitclla, with 10-inch loose sprays of dingy greenish 

 flowers, high above the typical and handsome Tiarolloid foliage of the 

 whole group. The root -leaves form knobules at the end of their stems, 

 which strike root when they drop dying to earth, and so propagate 

 the plant excessively, considering its unattractiveness. 



Townsendia. — This is a beautiful family of dwarf and usually 

 high-alpine Asters from the Rockies, that require specially gritty, rather 

 rich soil, but quite light and stony and especially well-drained, with 

 abundance of water below, while growing. (Seed, and division of 

 clumps.) 



T. exscapa (T. sericea) is a packed mass of silk} T -grey little narrow 

 oval leaves, on which sit conspicuous fine wide Asters of white or pink 

 or purple, on stems of about an inch in June. Even closer and tighter 

 is the habit of its variety T. e. Wilcoxiana, where the leaves are darker 

 and hardly silky, while the flowers are of lavender-blue — their only 

 possible detraction being that, so to speak, their eye is a trifle large 

 and fat for the eyelash of their florets. Neither species nor variety 

 is a plant of the mountains, but belongs, instead, to the plains. 



T. formosa (T. pinetorum) has thin foliage, and otherwise makes 

 exactly the picture of a rather dwarfish Aster alpinus. It lives in 

 tho mountains of New Mexico. 



T. grandijlora grows from 2 to 8 inches high, forming tufts of quite 

 narrow long paddle-shaped leaves, and sending up in June abundant 

 noble vi<»l<t Asters nearly 2 inches across. (Wyoming and New 

 Miexic 



Tozzia alpina is a singularly rare and ugly little Serophulariad 

 with minute and squinny yellow flowers, that may be seen, and hastily 



398 



