TROLLIUS. 



feathered leaves of the family, but with noble many-sepalled flowers 

 of lovely lilac-blue, about 2 inches across, shooting into blossom with 

 the first dawn of spring, and then never scattering, as in the others of the 

 race, but still clothing the seed-vessel about with the fifteen or twenty 

 faded tabs. This great rarity is a capricious little creature too, and 

 must havo a corner in partial shade, where it may be established in 

 very loose spongy and gritty soil of peat and loaf-mould and coarse 

 sand and many stones, with water flowing abundantly beneath during 

 the time of development, to keep it in mind of the dank marsh hollows 

 of tho highest Altai, where it leaps up from the first influence of the 

 melting snows. No pains would bo too much to make it happy. 



T. patulus has wide orbs of pale yellow, on stems of about 

 a foot. 



T. polysepalus is 18 inches high, with fully furnished flowers of 

 clear yellow. 



T. pumilus is an easy-going dwarf plant of 6 inches or so, for the 

 rock-garden, that has lost all right, like so many others, to the name 

 of Globe-flower, for the sepals of rich yellow stand quite flatly out 

 more straight than in any buttercup. Tho flowers appear in sprays 

 above the pile of fat leaves, cut into three plump and overlap- 

 ping lobes, with plump irregular shallow lobings or scallopings. 

 T. p. yunnanensis is a fine thing, larger and more complicated than 

 the species ; but somehow tho simpler shorter stems and smaller scale 

 of type-T. pumilus better suit the contrast of bright flat flowers above 

 the tuft of dark and comfortable little leaves ; so that the species, 

 neater and hi better proportion of flower to foliage, almost lonely on 

 their shorter stems above the glossy leaves, has a better and more well- 

 bred look than the taller and more lavish sprays of T. p. yunnanensis, 

 above an ampler leafage, that with the added length of stem, violate 

 the balance between the size of the 9-inch or foot-high tuft and its 

 comparatively smaller flat flowers of bright gold. 



All these can be raised from seed, but the work is slow and pre- 

 carious, for Globe-flowers rarely germinate until the year after their 

 sowing, and even then take two or three seasons to reach their fair 

 development. On the other hand, they detest, like all clumping 

 Ranunculads, to be disturbed and divided and harassed at the root. 

 And, in any case, if seod is to be sown, it should be sown as soon as 

 possible after gathering, the Ranunculads having germs that feed 

 rapidly upon themselves and consume away ; so that prompt sowing 

 with all of them is most advisable, that you may get the unexhausted 

 vigour of the vital force thrown immediately into tho development of 

 the young plant. 



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