HEERIA ELEGANS. 
deep and stony ground, there to be left roaming among the blocks, 
where they blossom from the middle of summer. They are almost 
all about 10 inches or a foot tall, sub-shrubs of some choiceness ;_such 
are H. altaicum, red ; H. boreale, deeper carmine-red (claret is the tone 
infused in all these reds) ; H. caucasicum and H.elongatum, carmine; H. 
flavescens and H. splendens (why “‘splendens”’?), both creamish white; H. 
microcalyz, H. neglectum, and H. sibiricum,in varying shades of carmine- 
purple. On the Alps, however, there is one quite familiar Hedysarum 
deserving fuller notice. This is H. obscurum, which there often rouses 
wonder by its unalpine habit and look, as it runs about in the high 
turf of the hills, making tangles of large leaves, dark and thin and 
green, made up of leaflets in uneven number ; and then among these, 
sends up a foot-high stem with a loose spire of hanging pea-flowers, 
large and brilliant, of rich reddish-violet, by no means deserving the 
plant’s unfair name (which perhaps accounts for its rarity in gardens— 
unless indeed that interminable and unnegotiable root be cause 
sufficient). It must be raised, like all, from seed. Of smaller species, 
however, there are several that promise especial charm for the rock 
garden. H. capitatum is a prostrate species of the Mediterranean 
region, ultimately almost hairless, and with big flower-heads of the 
strongest purple; H. erythroleucum goes so far to please us as to 
form a dense cushiony mass, which, by a further stretch of kindness, 
is silvery with a dense ironed pile of silk. The flowers stand out 
from this on stems of 2 or 3 inches, and even now the plant does not 
relax its generous effort to delight us completely, for they are of 
intense purple. This beautiful thing haunts the precipices of Asia 
Minor, in Cilicia and Cataonia, &c.; while of the same kidney is 
H. brahuicum, from some 11,000 feet in the Alps of Afghanistan. And 
other species of charm are H. sericeum, H. elegans, and H. argentewm, 
these being of neat habit and vested in shining silk. See Appendix. 
Heeria elegans is now being proclaimed without shame as a 
hardy plant. It is no such thing. It is rather more tender than 
Odontoglossum, being a loose, thin-textured, prostrate delicacy from 
Mexico, with many large flowers suggesting those of MHpilobiwm 
obcordatum, but wider, singly borne, and of an even more vehement 
magenta-crimson. It should be grown, at need, in light soil on a 
warm shoulder, and treated as an annual of which cuttings must each 
year be taken to keep up the stock. . 
Helianthemum.—Of garden Rock-roses there are now so many, 
and those so incomparably more precious than any others, that the 
wild types.tend to sink out of cultivation. H. wmbellatum, however, 
is a species of special charm, forming a fine-leaved upstanding bush of 
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