GENTIANA. 
the field-geranium and the Paradise Lilies, it would have all the value of 
its amplitude and tremendous port, if planted in very deep rich open 
soil in colonies and stately groups, and there left alone for ever to glorify 
the whole season with its formes architecturales, and then, in full 
summer, become a stalwart torch crowded with radiating sparks of 
sunlight in successive tiers, 
G. macrophylla is a species of quite singular worthlessness even 
among the large and leafy flopping Cluster-heads. It blooms in late 
summer with packed heads of little pale flowers enveloped in leafage 
at the top of stems that are rank without even the power of standing 
erect. There is also a variety, temptingly named G. m. cyanea, which 
may perhaps be a trifle bluer in blossom than the other, but is 
in no other way an improvement. China is fertile of these frights. 
G. Makinoi in the shrubby and boggy mid-regions of Japan makes 
tufts of foliage recalling some very thin long-leaved plantain, and 
then sends up foot-high stems set here and there with pairs of leaves, 
and carrying at the top a head of two or three white trumpet-shaped 
blossoms. 
G. montana belongs to the mountains of the South Island of New 
Zealand—a stalwart species of some 2 feet high or less, with a large 
rosette of broad flat leathery fleshy leaves at the base, and then one 
or more unbranching stems, carrying wide heads of specially large 
white flowers not crowded on the sprays. 
G. nikoensis is a Japanese species like a rather taller G. Pnewmon- 
anthe with fewer, much larger, baggier blooms, inclined to be pulled 
in at the mouth, and only two or three at the top of an erect 9-inch 
stem towards the end of summer. 
G. nipponica is a dwarf plant, blooming in June, with smallish 
flowers of bright blue on stems of some 2 inches, weak and leafy. 
G. nivalis —The little annual Gentian of the high Alps which tingles 
out at you from the upmost fine herbage in tiny sparks of living 
turquoise is of none avail in ‘the garden, sow you it never so wisely 
nor so often. There is something evil in its nature; to the wickedness 
of being an annual—a crime of exceeding rarity in the high Alps, it adds 
the still worse blackness of being probably a parasite into the bargain. 
The best chance would be to sow seed broadcast on a prepared ground, 
mixed up with other seed of the Alpenwiesen, in hopes that one 
among them might offer food for its roots. But the Alpenwiesen, 
though alluring in idea, are not always profitable in practice, unless 
you have collected the various seeds yourself: the finest I ever saw 
in an English garden had yielded noble crops of chickweed fit to take 
the prize at any show ; but nothing else. And yet another Alpine 
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