BAPTISIA. 
every other seedling, where all are so good. One wants a special box 
of new adjectives to differentiate between the various purples named 
above, and ever-new ones go on arriving without end; yet all are 
glorious, and the newest is always said to be the best, and proclaimed 
with loudest applause. It is indeed a wonder with how greedy a 
zeal this Levantine race, from Lebanon and Olympus and Asia, has 
adopted the English climate, when nothing, a priori, would have 
seemed so improbable as that they should prove hardy at all. In 
point of fact, they so little seem to crave for torrid sun-heat that they 
can hardly, if at all, be grown upon the Riviera ; while in our gardens 
—every back-yard seen from the train in spring bears witness to the 
ways of Aubrietia, of which every shoot stuck into the border will 
root, if it be a case of multiplying some special form ; while from a 
threepenny packet of seed hundreds of feet of desert rock-work may 
be made to blossom like the rose. 
Azolla caroliniana is a minute water-weed, consisting of small, 
crowded crimpy leaves, like frizzled-up Marchantia fronds gone red ; 
they float upon the face of the waters, and look extremely pretty, 
especially after a shower, when the water-jewels lie sparkling among 
their crimpiness. But they also multiply at such an inordinate rate, 
every broken-off fragment forming a new plant in a day, and a new 
mat in a week, after the importunate habit of aquatics when they 
thrive at all, that there is very soon no coping with it, and the pond 
becomes one unbroken sheet of curly russet-red*Marchantia, on to 
which misguided cats take jumps after their prey, supposing it to be 
solid ground. Fortunately, though ineradicable by man, it is more 
amenable to the displeasure of Heaven ; and, not being particularly 
hardy, is ultimately swept away by a winter of especial severity. 
B 
Ballota spinosa, the only member of the Horehound family to 
make any claim for admittance to the rock-garden, does not make that 
claim very effectually. It is a rare and rather ugly little spiny rarity 
with white flowers, which demands especial conditions of sun and 
drought and drainage, when, in point of fact, it is not worthy of a 
place in the garden at all, except for curiosity. 
Banffya petraea. See under Gypsophila transylvanica. 
Baptisia is a rather second-class rank group of North-American 
Leguminosae, not unlike upstanding glabrous Lupines. In cool soil 
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