ERITRICHIUM TERGLOVIENSE. 
heavens (whence the plant has surely descended straight and undefiled 
upon our dusty earth) in a rage, than any number of robin red- 
breasts in cages. Impossible ? yes, not impossible, with great pains 
and fusses, to keep alive, alone and palely loitering, in his pot or pre- 
pared nook ; but impossible, indeed, to make anything but a homesick 
exile, impossible to inspire with the air of his lost hills amid our pallid 
temperatures, or fill his veins with the blood of blueness that he draws 
from the blasts of the wind-swept arétes where he has his home. And 
yet, and yet—what gardener worth his salt will ever give up hope 
of a happy and hearty Eritrichium ? Somewhere, somewhere in the 
world, on some strange mountain or penguin-haunted Arctic isle, 
there must surely be an Eritrichium, form or species, that shall prove 
of happier temper, and gratify the lucky gardener with the garter of 
his highest ambition. Indeed Eritrichium is more to blame than the 
collector, for it looks so happy, so indestructible and cosy in its crevice 
or sandy slope, that it does not seem possible for a mass so compact of 
blossom, so tidily rooted in a ball of fibre,to prove anything but as robust 
as it looks. The plant provokes the trowel. In cultivation, then, let 
us do the best we can, seeing that no amount of wise words will ever 
induce us to come empty-handed off a mile-long ridge, turquoised 
with round slabs of blue ; let Eritrichium be bone-dry in light sandy 
gritty mould all the winter through, from September to March, and from 
that time onward let it be in a sunny moraine, or very morainy chipful 
mixture, with water flowing underneath. For it is not perhaps 
always realised how much water the root will not only take but 
actually demand throughout its growing period—so long as that water 
is not administered over the soft and silver-silky coat. Another point 
that is not realised is one that too much escapes the notice of those 
who cope not only with this but with other presumably difficult alpine 
species. Our natural first inclination is to put something rare and 
difficult into a rare choice place all by itself, where it cannot be invaded 
or worried by rivals. But this is precisely what the poor thing does 
not want ; it misses in its loneliness the cheery society of the little 
grasses and weeds of the hills, that made company for it at home, 
gave its roots something to fight, something to carry off superfluous 
moisture and fatness, kept it going, in fact, with the interest and 
keenness of life which is always sure to flag, alike in plants and humans, 
under the system of too elaborate shelter and seclusion. So Erit- 
richium rarely if ever grows alone, and is always happiest and at his 
widest tuffets and broadest expanses of blue smile, if he is wrestling it 
out with the smallest and finest of herbage, Arenarias, Sedums, minute 
high-alpine Gentians, and all the little lovely fry that fill the upmost 
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