CALTHA. 
Callirrhoé, a group of trailing Mallows, of indifferently hardy 
temper, even in hot and sandy soils, with rapidly evanescent flowers 
of rather aniline tone. The best and most generally known is C. in- 
volucrata, with long loose branches, five-fingered foliage, and silky 
cups of a purplish lilac; rather better, because more compact, is its 
variety, C. lineariloba, with roots that plunge to a great depth, and 
flowers of purplish colours and a white base. 
Callixéné (including Luzuriaga). C. polyphylla (Luzuriaga radi- 
cans) is the best of a small group of almost shrubby Liliaceous plants 
from the far Southern hemisphere, where, in the woodland, C. polyphylla 
forms neat mats of glossy foliage not unlike that of some quite minute 
‘and broad-leaved creeping Box or Ruscus, from which in time emerge 
white flowers like Lilies of the Valley, hanging from the axils. It can 
twine and attain to a couple of feet, but in gardens is more usually 
seen small and nestling to the ground. This species belongs to Chile, 
and is soundly hardy, though not specially easy to grow, liking 
damp woodland soil in the protection of dense shade. Others among 
the lesser species are C. drymophylla from Tasmania, C. parviflora 
from New Zealand, and C. marginata, which is very abundant and 
deliciously sweet-scented in the Falklands; all, if acquired, for the 
same treatment. The last might be the easiest. 
Calochortus ?—No! They are not fitted for general outdoor 
culture in England ; and those bold heroes who must needs decorate 
their rock-gardens with the exquisite but precarious beauty of the 
Mariposas, will find them fully set forth and described in catalogues, 
which even have so lively a sense of their difficulty that they actually 
give directions for their culture, though in terms of hope more warm 
than experience warrants. The race is vast and lovely, and appar- 
ently in nature fitted for every unpleasant diversity of soil, whether 
in bog-land, heavy and hard, or in the lightest of hot sands. None 
the less the utmost they will do in England (except in the gardens of 
the specially favoured) is to arise just once from their elaborate beds, 
wave at the world their painted waxen heads and delicate fringes, 
and then go on to join the Oncocyclus Irids in a better land. 
Caltha.—Besides our native Marsh Marigold, the Water-butter- 
cups offer some other pleasant species for the decoration of the bog. 
C. dioneaefolia makes deep and dense tuffets of minute oval leaves, 
fat and dark green, deeply shining, clustered on a thick trunk. They 
exactly resemble those of Dionaea in miniature, with the fringed 
overlapping lobes at the end. This most curious attractive rarity 
is abundant in Tierra del Fuego, where it carpets the cold ground and 
illuminates the darkness with its small pale stars of yellow. 
155 
