ALLIUM. 
and made synonymous with the next. (Indeed, some lists appear to 
treat A. Ostrowskyanum, narcissiflorum, and oreophilum as if they 
were all one species, and even, by a neat of naughtiness, 
turn A. oreophilum into A. « oreophyllum,” which is mere nonsense. 
‘“‘Mountain-leaf”’ has no meaning; “Mountain-lover”’ is no less apt 
a description of this Allium than of me.) 
A. narcissiflorum (A. grandiflorum and A. pedemontanum) is the 
glory of its race, not only in our own European mountains but in all 
the ranges of all the world. Let no one be deluded by catalogues 
into buying in place of this, as an alpine Allium, the large and dowdy 
A. Victorialis (which apparently, in defiance of grammar, we must 
follow the original authority’s fantasy in calling A. Victorzalis) ; nor 
is there much hope or profit in attempting neat and tiny A. alpestre 
from the upmost meadows of the Alps—occurring in scattered clumps, 
for instance, on the gypsum-dunes in front of the Hotel de la Poste on 
the Mont Cenis, as A. Victorialis luxuriates rankly on the hummocks of 
the upper Heuthal. In places far more august dwells A. narcissiflorum, 
in the steep earth-pans and stony screes high up in the most awe- 
some shelves of the limestone Alps of Piedmont (and far away into the 
Caucasus). Here it runs underground, forming a huge ramifying 
mass of root-stocks below in the unnegotiable stony hard earth, and 
the surface of that barren place is covered with a waving green jungle 
of upstanding strap-shaped leaves, up among which come shooting, 
in August, springy stems of 8 or 10 inches, each hanging out a loose 
head of some six or eight flowers, very large and lovely indeed, great 
pendent bells of glowing vinous red. Unfortunately an evil god- 
mother has dowered this beauty with a commensurate drawback, in 
the form of an exaggerated stench—a stench so horrible that one can 
hardly bear to collect it, to say nothing of the fact that its soil is like 
rock, and one’s own foothold slithering and insecure upon the lip of 
abysmal precipices. None the less, A. narcissiflorum responds easily 
to culture in warm dry places of the rock-garden, and should surely 
appreciate the moraine ; as also should A. Balansae, a near relation in 
beauty and brilliance to A. oreophilum, but differing in pink flowers 
rather narrower, and their segments blunt, not sharp. (Lazic Pontus.) 
Nor, to finish, need we grudge a welcome to pretty little A. pulchellum 
from Southern Europe, with quite slight graceful aspiring stems, and 
heads of pink flowers standing airily out this way and that, irregularly, 
from a small head composed chiefly of buds and bulbils. The plant 
blooms in high summer, and has special charm if planted among 
similar graceful things, such as fine grasses, Campanula rotundifolia, 
and white Linums. 
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