VILLARSIA NYMPHAEOEIDES. 



perhaps its original type, green and not silvery. V. aurantiaca is now 

 Ordbtu . V. ventdoM grows 18 inches or 2 feet in the rocky places of 

 Elburz, and has pink flowers tipped with violet ; V. eeirrliosa makes a 

 pale-coloured plant with many stems of 5 or 6 inches, carrying each 

 four or five large flowers of a lively violet blue, above the short and 

 ungrappling foliage ; V. alpestris, like the last, is an alpine from the 

 high stony places of the Levant (where the longer season admits of a 

 Vetch's development ) ; it is a lovely species of the same many-stemmed 

 habit, flopping or drooping, and creeping as it goes ; :he profuse stems 

 are 4 to 6 inches long, bearing one-sided sprays of eight or nine large 

 and splendid violet Pea-blooms ; T\ mtdiieaidis has almost the same 

 beauty. But the finest of all is V. canesczns. which colours all the 

 slopes of Lebanon above the Cedars, from afar off, with a tapestry of 

 fallen sky. It is an erect grower of 8 or 10 inches, with many stems 

 clad closely in silver wool. It is in all ways more robust than its 

 kinsman V. argentea, with larger foliage and blossoms of brilliant and 

 dazzling blue. Very similar is V. Greyana, from the dry alpine slopes 

 of the Cilician Taurus ; but this has pointed rather than rounded 

 leaflets. It is also firmer in the stem than their frail cousin V. variegata, 

 from the Alps of Pontus, which on many weakly stalks of 6 inches or a 

 foot, has large flowers variegated with blue and white. All these 

 Vetches will aiise profusely from seed, and thus are best propagated. 

 All will grow well in any warm, open, stony loam, and all will bloom 

 brilliantly in the height of summer. 



Villarsia nymphaeoeides is a really pretty but terrible water- 

 weed, that in a year or two fills your pond with floating leaves like 

 those of a tiny water-lily, among which sit solitary, all the summer 

 through, fluff}-, five-pointed, starry cups of golden yellow. Other 

 species sometimes offered are not safely hardy. For V. Crlsta-galU see 

 Meny ittfhes. 



Vinca. — The periwinkles are useful furnishers of backgrounds, 

 rather thai prominent adornments of the garden. There are many 

 varieties of the Greater and the Lesser Periwinkle, V. major and 

 V. minor. There are also neater growers in V. acutifiora of South 

 Europe (deal lilac), V. d'jformis of Portugal (clean blue), and the 

 yet neater 8-inch V. libanotica. But the supremely beautiful Periwinkle 

 of the family, worthy of the choicest garden, is the too -seldom-seen 

 V. herbacea, which is a true herbaceous plant, dying away in whiter, 

 and in spring sending out over the slope of rock very long and very 

 slender branches, rooting at the ends, and set here and there with 

 slender, pointed leaves in pairs, and bearing in spring and again all 

 through the summer most Lovely clear delicate stars of blue that 



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