GEUM. 
convey the youngling tuft at the tip to a new habitation of its own, and 
so establish the group in spreading force. The flowers, too, are of a 
magnificence to match the clump, for they are borne singly on stems 
that may be as much as 6 inches high, and are enormous golden suns 
that would make two of montanum’s, to be succeeded by a similarly 
reduplicated splendour of silkier, fluffier, more wild and catherine- 
wheelish whirls of silver. G. reptans is never found except at these 
gaunt grey heights and never found except on the primary formations, 
where, however, in the last and most terrible barrens of stone, you may 
pretty confidently reckon upon seeing its luminous faces glowing at 
you from afar like flecks of fallen sunlight there among the débris. 
It is undoubtedly the noblest and most gorgeous of high-alpines, alike 
in growth and in flower, and there is nothing in the world for which 
it can be mistaken. In cultivation, however, its heart fails and it 
often proves a mimp, though sometimes thriving massively for a year 
or two in the kitchen-garden border, abundantly blooming and seed- 
ing, indeed, but never abiding long in one stay. For on its subter- 
ranean water-supply { think the plant depends far more than even its 
other neighbours up there—as any one may understand who has seen 
to what a depth those woody trunks have to plunge for food, through 
what a sahara of stony sterility, where none of its neighbours usually 
dare to intrude on ground in which only the Geum could find support. 
Yet there, and there alone, will the Geum live, and in such places 
accordingly, for the sake of its permanence at least, should it be tried 
in the garden, though here it may be very happy for awhile in fatter 
circumstances, and often, in cultivation, seems thus to be more profuse 
in the production of its huge and brilliant flowers from August through 
September. It is always free with its seed, but this is curiously re- 
luctant to germinate, and perhaps should be sown on the most arid 
parts of the ashpit instead of cosily in pots, so as to make it feel more 
at home and prompt in springing: the plant, however, should be 
multiplied by its copious runners, each one of which will root like 
that of a strawberry whether you look after it or no. Finally, a bird 
in the hand is worth two in the bush ; and rich, very deep soil, full 
and fat, will give you a greater certainty of joy in its flowers than 
will, so far as my experience goes, the more austere circumstances of 
the ordinary moraine, in which the Geum goes on living from year to 
year indeed, but is chary ofits glory. A moraine, in fact, ought to be 
built specially for it—a special moraine, 3 or 4 feet deep or more, with 
a stream running below all the summer, and a mixture composed of 
practically nothing but granitic grit, and powdered old manure, silted 
among the largest and coarsest granite or sandstone blocks in 
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