ACONITUM. 
Traversti, squarrosa, and Hookeri: much smaller and better fitted for 
the rock-garden are Lyallii, Trailliz, Kirkii, Monrot, polita, attaining 
from 4 to 18 inches. Quite tiny bundles of cruel needles are Dobsonii 
and simplex, wee species, intensely spiny and glaucous-grey. The 
flowers of all are negligible. 
Though Aconitum need not necessarily have any place in the rock- 
garden, on however large a scale it may be built, and though the race 
is sinister and evil in its poisonous sombre splendour almost beyond 
any other that we have, yet, for the guidance of those who find nothing 
but nude names in lists, I may briefly go through the best species 
that may be used to adorn remoter corners of the large rock-garden, 
in any soil that is deep and rich and cool, whether in sun or shade, 
though shade best fits the gloomy tone of their magnificence. 
HERBACEOUS ACONITES USUALLY WITH BLUE FLOWERS 
Some among very many: by no means all, or most, of distinct 
garden value 
album, large pure white and splendid flowers, very freely borne in 
August. A specially noble Levantine, grievously rare. 
autumnale, a variety of japonicum, medium height, with stumpy 
wide helmets of blue, appearing in September to October. 
biflorum, a real rock-garden plant of the choicest. Only 6 inches 
high, with one pair of big pale-blue helmets in June. (Siberia.) 
californicum, more properly oregonense or columbianum, has 
deeply divided leaves and conical pale-blue helmets in September ; 
the true plant is extremely rare in cultivation, forms of Napellus being 
sent out instead. 
Delavayi, new in from China, about 4 feet high, hairy, dark blue. 
October. 
elatum, immense flowers in loose spikes of 3 or 4 feet, in June. 
japonicum, 3 feet, not very stout spikes of blue-violet helmets, 
very woolly and large, in July and August. 
Kusnetzowii is a smooth 3-foot species, with tripartite leaves and 
close spikes of clear blue, with almost semicircular hood. 
Napellus, our own dismal Monkshood, now wild, or at all events 
now widely established along the stream sides of the West, and so 
persistent in its malign attendance upon man that it even climbs 
high into the Alps, and there forms dense jungles round the highest 
chalets, in the hope that some day somebody may eat of its poisoned 
root and die. Napellus has innumerable forms, net necessarily to be 
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