ALETRIS FARINOSA. 
Alétris farinosa is a North-American species, not unlike a 
larger Tofieldia in habit ; it is not very easy to grow, is by no means 
worth the effort, and is, altogether, the kind of thing described by the 
wisest catalogues as “‘interesting.” 
Alfredia, worthless Composites in the Thistle section. 
Alisma contains two good things for the water garden—our native 
graceful water-plantain, A. Plantago, with its tall loose sheaves of 
innumerable small stars, all throughout the summer in any depth of 
water not exceeding 2 feet, but best in the shallows. Unfortunately 
the plant is so profuse a seeder that the whole garden soon grows full 
of nothing else. Far choicer is wee A. natans, whose small oval leaves 
lie dark on the face of the waters, and show up the beauty of its 
dainty three-petalled flowers of pure white floating among them. This 
plant may be trusted not to be troublesome, and is an extremely rare 
native of a few British pools in the West. 
Alkanna makes up a race of South-European and Levantine 
Borages, sometimes coarse and biennial, but sometimes really splendid. 
In cultivation are A. lutea, and the handsome A. tinctoria, like a 
golden foot-high Lithospermum; and even better things may be 
expected of A. incana, which is another nobly beautiful rock plant 
from alpine fissures in the cliffs of Caria and Pisidia, graceful in 
habit, all softly grey with down, and carrying blue flowers as fine as 
those of Lithospermum purpureo-coeruleum. A. areolata, from shady 
places on Cadmus, is rough, not downy. A. primulaefolia attains 
only to 4 or 6 inches, with sticky little narrow leaves and yellow 
flowers; and A. scardica, from alpine regions between 5000 to 7000 
feet, is only half a foot high with blue flowers, while A. rostellata is a 
yellow counterpart of A. incana. For all these the treatment appro- 
priate to sun-loving Anchusa is suggested. 
Allectorirus yedoensis, though very rare in cultivation, is a 
lovely little fairy that ought to offer no problem of delicacy considering 
its specific name. From among arching glossy strap-shaped leaves, 
like those of some tiny Imantophyllum, shoot up loose graceful plumes 
of rosy-lilac stars, suggesting those of an Anthericum, to which, 
indeed, the plant is closely related, and to whose simple treatment 
we all hope it may respond (Anthericum yedoense). 
Allium.—The vast family of the Garlics, ranging all across the 
northern and southern regions of the temperate zone, is disqualified in 
the garden on account of its prevalent and odious stink, which, com- 
bined with the predominance in the family of inconspicuous weeds, 
sheds a disability on even the beautiful species that here and there 
occur. Almost all Garlics, however, are of the easiest and most un- 
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