DODECATHEON. 
stems carrying what can only be called a bunch of hanging narrow 
Cyclamens, with mouth of gold and protruded style. D. Meadia, so 
much grown in gardens, is so big and stout as almost to be coarse and 
overweening ; it has white varieties and pale varieties, and splendens 
varieties a trifle more malignant in colour than the magenta-rose or 
lilac of the type. This species, broadly oval in the leaf, varies greatly, 
and America contains many others closely allied and minutely 
differentiated. D. conjugens is a smaller, neater plant of not more 
than a foot high at the most, but usually some 8 or 10 inches, with 
fewer but larger and finer flowers; the leaves are always smooth at 
the edges instead of being more or less scalloped, as almost always is 
the case in D. Meadia; D. Clevelandii has them nibbled at the rim, 
and the base of the blossom yellow and not white. D. Jeffreyi may 
easily be recognised by its especially long and narrow foliage standing 
rather erect, and with the leaves always running to a point. The 
scape is tall and stout, the flowers many and sometimes sweet-scented. 
D, integrifolium is told from D. Meadia by the possession of specially 
fleshy bracts beneath the flower-head ; but the rock-garden, now that 
the bog and water-edge are well-furnished (without further wading 
into the subtleties that differentiate the many tall American Dode- 
catheons, and are often based on isolated and perhaps uncertain 
specimens), has its own primary concern with the delicate and lovely 
species of the high Alps. Delicate and lovely these are indeed, small 
frail stems of 6 inches or so above the clump, and carrying few flowers, 
and those large and brilliant and exquisite. These lovelinesses, how- 
ever, are too rarely seen; they are not very long-lived, and for their 
happiness demand a specially gritty compost almost amounting to 
moraine, of the most perfect drainage, but watered subterraneously all 
through the summer. Of such are D. pauciflorum, most elegant and fine, 
about 6 inches high, from the upmost slopes towards the snows, as 
it may be seen sparsely glowing here and there on the highest banks 
of the Lakes in the Clouds, among the stones, with the grey striped 
squirrels chittering around it; D. frigidum, from still further North, 
towards the Behring Straits; D. acuminatum, often with white 
flowers, from Missouri River ; D. cylindrocarpum, near D. pauciflorum, 
but with broader, fatter foliage, and the filament much shorter; JS. 
pubescens, a delicate dainty thing of 4 inches, with blossoms of a fine 
“blue-purple,”’’ from Missoura mountain in Montana; D. pulchrum, 
8 inches, with a tight head of rosy-violet, and a very dark wavy line 
round the mouths of the flowers, from the Yellowstone Park; D. 
puberulentum, always downy-stemmed, about 8 inches or less, with 
rosy-mauve flowers and a broad band of yellow round the mouth; 
(1,919) 305 U 
