TRIFOLIUM. 



foot-stalks. Aniorica, as with its railway accidents, so with its plants, 

 is never content until it has outdone the Old World in largeness of 

 scale ; accordingly there is an American development of this, called 

 T. canadensis, corresponding to the American forms of Linnaea and 

 Maianthemum, in being rather stouter and larger and moro robust 

 than their effete and overbred relations of the outworn Old World. 



Trifolium. — The huge family of Clovers does so much for fodder 

 that it feels dispensed from service in the garden ; so that, out of its 

 innumerable species, only three or four can oven be admitted to the 

 rock-work, and even these are still more easily omitted without loss 

 to anybody. On Parnassus lives a little clover, T. Pamassi, that 

 makes close carpets of fine green, and has flower-heads of bright 

 pink as large as a pea. Twice the size of this in all its parts is T. 

 caespitosum, and light open slopes might well be found whero they 

 might both bo more welcome than any of the largo Clovers anywhere 

 in the garden, though sometimes, as for a curiosity, space is found for 

 T. ochroleucum and T. montanum and our own very rare T. stellatum 

 with a stature of a foot or so and dowdy heads of soft and starry 

 fluff. Yet another dwarf is T. polyphyllum from the Caucasus, with 

 carpet habits and heads of clear rose in June ; and for hot and value- 

 loss places we might use the dark-leaved form atropurpureum of our 

 common white Clover, or even, more suitably, golden-headed little 

 T. badium of the Alps, while T. rubens is a bush of a foot or two with 

 dense whirligig-heads of purple-rod in June and July. But, take it 

 all in ah, the race is of singular unimportance in tho garden, and even 

 the one true alpine, which is also the best of the family, is not of 

 capital value there. For T. alpinum is not often seen in gardens, 

 though of easy culture in light and stony peaty soil on hot and well- 

 drained banks. Yet it is handsome enough, with its packed masses 

 of large folded trefoils of long, thin and narrow-pointed light-green 

 foliage, close upon which, on baro stems of 2 or 3 inches, sent up in 

 profusion, are carried amply-furnished and gracefully-furnished hoads 

 of enormous flowers, by far the largost in the race. Yet their dim pink- 

 ness has precisely that lack of brilliancy which is so common a fault 

 among the Peaflowers. It is just between the notes, as Papilionacoae 

 so commonly fall out of tune — neither softly pale, nor clearly bright, 

 but just a murk of mild and muddy mauve. Even tho pallid forms 

 and the creamy albino have the same fatal fault of indeterminatcnoss 

 and inefficiency of tone. T. alpinum is an abundant species of tho 

 open Alps, which, indeed, its dense turf goes far to compose. For 

 over all the undulating folds of the granitic and non-calcaroous ranges 

 it lies like a cloak, and tho miles of tho moorland are springy with its 



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