BARBARAEA. 
room may be found in the wild garden for B. australis. Spikes of 
blue, with a form alba, blooming in summer. 
Barbaraea, the common yellow Winter-cress (B. vulgaris), is 
valued in borders on account of a deeply brilliant-yellow double form ; 
but there are some species more legitimately admissible to the choice 
rock-garden. 
B. brachycarpa, though it only has the flowers of B. vulgaris, makes 
a neat and tiny clump not more than 2 or 3 inches high, about damp 
places and water-courses high in Phrygia and on the Bithynian 
Olympus. 
B. rupicola is more important. It is a tidy and low-growing thing 
(though attaining to a foot, if drawn up in shade), forming a tap-root 
the first year, and then running from a knotty stock. It is an almost 
stemless plant, with very large golden-yellow flowers, and the leaves 
at the base of the tuft heart-shaped or egg-shaped. (From the moun- 
tains of Corsica—TIncudine, Ciarnente, Fourche de Bavella, &c.) 
Bartsia alpina, much as one may appreciate its stiff little spikes 
of dull metallic purple leaves and flowers, in the wetter, finer fields of 
the Alps or in favoured corners of English alpine meadows, especially 
when its spires of darkness are associated with the roseate sheets of 
Primula farinosa, is nevertheless not a friend to the garden. Like 
many of its close cousins in Scrophularineae—Gerardia, Castilleja, 
and Euphrasia, for instance—there is about it the taint of the parasitic, 
and the best, if not the only way, to have the Bartsia in cultivation 
will be to bring it down in a great sod from the mountain, with all its 
companions includéd ; and even in this case next year will probably 
find the Bartsia gone, and the whole garden possessed by some terrible 
weed imported in the Bartsia’s clump. : 
Bellévalia, a dainty little race, so close to Mascari and Hyacin- 
thus as to be often submerged in one or the other. There are many 
species in the Levant of these small Hyacinths, and among these (choice 
for any wholesome sunny place, especially in company with equally 
select Daffodils, such as NV. triandrus calathinus and N. Bulbocodium 
monophyllus) are: B. leucophaea, of pale colour, from Servia and 
South-east Russia; B. nervosa (also B. aleppica), from 2 to 5 inches 
high, with azure bells, from the hot limestone hills of Aleppo; B. 
Heldreichii, from the orchards of Pamphylia, about 3 inches tall, with 
flowers of intense violet-blue, packed in a close head on minute erect 
stems; B. azurea, very like Muscari pallens, but with the charac- 
teristic bell of brilliant blue, wide and unconstricted at the mouth (the 
diagnosis of Bellevalia from Muscari), a treasure found especially near 
the lead-mines of the Cilician Taurus; and B. nivalis, whose tight 
142 
