HUDSONIA. 
be said to have any charms to proclaim. In this case it is indeed a 
one-eyed king in a blind kingdom. 
Hottonia palustris, the Water-viclet, so called because it 
grows in the water and has a distinct resemblance to a Stock, may 
often be seen in still pools and backwaters of England ; it is a valuable 
weed for the pond, which it fills with its foliage, fine as fern, from 
which rise clear of the water, in July and August, its spires of large 
lilac-pale flowers, that might indeed be those of a big Cardamine 
had they not five segments and other details that assign them so 
improbably to the august family of Primula. 
Houstonia, a famiiy of American Rubiads, of charm and 
daintiness inestimable, of which the oldest and still the favourite in 
cultivation is H. coerulea—a creeping treasure with spreading tufts 
that emits all the summer through (but especially in May) an in- 
credible and plant-hiding profusion of exquisite little pale-blue four- 
rayed stars borne singly on fine stems of 3 or 4 inches. Rather larger 
than this, and taller and more spreading, running and rooting, but no 
less lovely and profuse in the blossom, is H. serpyllifolia, with the same 
flowers suggesting a heaven of blue china, but here a more violet 
heaven of powder-blue ; and there are other species still with broader 
leaves, of which one is called H. purpurea because its flowers are white 
and its buds pink (in heads like those of a Bouvardia). The culture 
of all these fairy things (for which in America they have the rarely 
felicitous name of Bluets, or Innocence) is special. In fullest heat of 
the sun they soon lose the nitor of their leaves and bloom; so that 
their site should be a shaded one, and in rich loose sandy free soil, 
kept quite moist from below. Thus treated the Houstonias (except 
frail and purple H. tenuifolia, which likes dry rock) will make no 
bones about delighting their planter, and in the garden will themselves 
make old ones ; the finest masses I ever saw were growing under dense 
hazel-covert, in wet and heavy calcareous loam. There are various 
colour-varieties, purples and albinoes (H. faxoriorum) and so forth, in 
this race, but nothing could equal, much less surpass, the special aie 
ness of the types themselves. 
Houttuynia, the correct name of the small race which has nbesae 
been treated, for the sake of convenience, under its catalogue 
description of Anemiopsis—usually, too, «« Anemonopsis.”’ 
Hudsonia.—These, of which there are two species, are very 
pretty bushlings about 9 inches or a foot high, with fine foliage, and 
altogether like Hypericums in look and in profusion of golden stars, 
which are produced in summer. JH. ericoeides is indeed a heathlike 
little plant of much charm, from the sandy hills of the American coast ; 
(1,919) 417 2D 
