HELXINE SOLEIROLII. 
H. lividus makes a superb spouting fountain of hyaline bells in spring ; 
and H. caucasicus, though only a foot high, and a mere dwarf by com- 
parison with the last, with only one basal leaf to each stem, has 
flowers, one, two, or three, large and starry, with the sepals diminish- 
ing to the base, and their green enriched with purple ; while H. cyclo- 
phyllus is but a bigger version of our own H., viridis, which with H. 
foetidus and many kindred forms from abroad of magnificent dark 
foliage are hardly choice enough for admission to the rock-garden, 
unless it be built on a scale vast enough to admit of wild and out-of- 
the-way corners in shade and woodland. 
Helonias bullata is a tall Liliaceous plant for the bog, which 
can easily be grown and easily divided, and from its basal rosette of 
thick green leaves sends up a naked stem of 18 inches or so in April 
or May, on which unfolds a thick spire of smallish pink flowers rather 
starry and pretty in effect. 
Heloniepsis japonica requires rather more choice positions 
than the last, being a smaller copy of it, with larger bell-shaped pink 
nodding blossoms clustered upon leafy stems of some 6 or 9 inches in 
spring, standing sturdily up from the basal rosettes of evergreen shin- 
ing leaves ; we also have in cultivation H. breviscapa, also from Japan, 
in which the flowers are white or whitish, and the spike condensed into a 
tight head. An alternative name for the family is Sukerokia, under which 
euphonious title H. japonica is figured in the So-moku-sousets’, with all 
the exquisite beauty and accuracy of Japanese drawing, so different 
from the stiff and leaden style of Europe, where all the character of the 
plant is lost without any compensating enhancement of correctness. 
Helxine Soleirolii exists for other purposes than that of 
breaking jaws. The race-name is drawn from efAicow, ‘I cling and 
twine,’ which has also given us Helix the Ivy, and Helix the curled 
formation of the snail and the human ear. And the plant that here 
bears it is a minute Corsican carpeter with small rounded ‘crinkly- 
looking leaves of bright emerald sheen, especially delightful for ramb- 
ling about in a cool and shady rock; which it does, indeed, with the 
devastating vigour of Arenaria balearica, which it so much resembles 
in habit but that the leaves are larger and flatter and glossy-green, 
while the flowers that appear upon them are of no effect in themselves, 
but merely look as if the carpet had been expensively powdered with 
gold-dust. Helxine, for the uses indicated, has high value and charm ; 
pieces taken off will root, of course, immediately, and though the carpet 
does not always or everywhere resist a specially odious winter, there 
will always be a resurrection here and there in spring, from different 
parts of the blackened mass. 
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