ERODIUM. 
gaunt ridges with life. Never shall I forget the beauty and the luxuri- 
ance of Eritrichium on Malamott, for instance, where it not only had 
all this society to cheer it, but was threaded in and out everywhere in 
a wide carpet by the runners of Phytewma pauciflorum, sending up its 
rich tufts of glossy green even through the silver of Eritrichium’s 
cushions, and with its myriad fluffed heads of deep translucent violet 
making among the turquoise slabs of Hritrichium a colour-effect of 
such audacity as only nature could have conceived or carried out 
with success. But I fear it is long before we shall have that carpet 
in our gardens. None the less, let it be remembered that Eritrichium 
is not really by any means of desperate difficulty to keep alive and 
growing, if the various precautions here indicated are faithfully ensued ; 
the real trouble with the plant is that, even if it lives, it can never be 
made really to seem happily at home, can never—like many another 
high-alpine—be induced to show anything to suggest the size, brilliance, 
and prodigality of blossom with which it delights the unobservant 
heavens on its own inhospitable ridges. 
Erodium, a precious race very close to Geranium and Pelargonium, 
and of the highest importance in the rock-garden, where all its members 
require much the same sunny position and light deep calcareous loam, 
and all repay it by thriving on into fine clumps, and blooming right 
away through summer into autumn. The race is large, comprising 
many worthless plants, and many annuals or biennials; only one oi 
these do I here mention. The entire family belongs to the South and 
its sunniest hills; it can not only be raised easily from seed, and 
propagated by cuttings, but can also be hybridised. The hybrid 
Erodiums all follow at the end, after the descriptions of their parents ; 
for these, being divided into definite and marked botanical groups, 
may so most conveniently be taken in their order. 
Group I. 
All the species large-leaved like indoor Pelargoniums, and silky. 
E. Gussonei, from South Italy, is a lush and leafy thing, with 
woolly ample foliage lobed irregularly in scalloped lobes, but roughly 
heart-shaped in outline. The flowers are rather numerous in a head 
on the top of a stout stalk, all the petals being equal, and the whole 
blossom of deep unspotted pink with darker stripes, very handsome. 
For all this group, keep in mind the fleshy stock, the stout-habit, and 
leafage of a tender, sweet-scented Pelargonium, whose whole habit 
and head of flower its members recall. 
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