BERARDIA SUBACAULIS. 
fat leaves, waxy and glossy, above which on stems of a couple of inches, 
appear the profuse and delightful little daisies. 
Berardia subacaulis, a very rare and very frightful Composite, 
only found in wild and wholly stony places on the Alps of Dauphiné, 
with large round leaves, woolly and fat, and hardly any stem to the 
heads of inconspicuous flower. 
Bérbéris.—Though here be no place to deal critically with shrubs, 
it must yet be pointed out that many of the new Chinese Barberries 
are neat things, of the greatest possible beauty and charm for the 
right places of the bold rock-garden, and especially as centres of 
shelter for choice bulbs or woodland plants. Among these, of the 
larger and smaller sorts, are B. concinna, B. dulcis, B. empetrifolia, 
B. Gaignepainit, B. Hookeri compacta, B. Jamesonii, B. sanguinea 
(larger), B. dictyophylla (larger), all the dwarfer forms of B. steno- 
phylla (as B. s. diversifolia, gracilis, and Irwinii), B. subcaulialata 
(larger), B. Thunbergit minor, B. verruculosa, B. Wallichiana hypoleuca 
(of gardens), B. concinna, and the most fine and lovely B. Wilsonae. 
These all are of the easiest culture in any soil; they should have 
generous room for further development, especially such as Wilsonae, 
sanguinea, and the varieties of stenophyila. Their flowers, as a rule, 
are not less beautiful than the incandescent little scarlet plums that 
follow on Wilsonae, after blossoms like minute and delicate Maréchal 
Niel roses, delicately sweet. . 
Bergenia. See under Saxifraga, 
Berkheya. See, if it is worth the trouble, under Stobaea, 
Berteréa, a small cruciferous group, not to be included in 
Alyssum, because here the petals are cleft to the base, which never 
happens in true Alyssum. They are, however, the same in habit 
and look, for garden purposes, but a more or less biennial race, of scant 
value. The one most usual in cultivation is A. incana, a hoary plant, 
differing from true Alyssum also in having white flowers. 
Betonica.—The Betonies are coarse kitchen-garden-looking herbs, 
of which even the best, such as B. grandiflora (with varieties swperba, 
alba, and the dwarfer rosea) and B.nivea,are all best avoided in the rock- 
garden, where the silvered flannel leaves of some species may make a 
pretty mat, but the whorled spikes of labiate flowers in clumps near 
the top of a tallish stem have no attraction of elegance, and often, if 
“crimson,”’ are crimson only by the horticultural courtesy which thus 
avoids crude mention of the magenta therein too often predominating. 
Betula nana, the dwarf birch of the northern and Arctic regions, 
makes a fine and lacy little bush for the rock-garden, not more 
than a yard high at the most, and rather more across, extremely 
144 
