ISOPYRUM. 
her feet across the limestones of the Levant. But not for ours—their 
loyalty to their mistress holds only good in Syria ; they do not recognise 
her in the rain-cloaks that she wears in the West, and lands of younger 
divinities shall never twice re-greet such children of mystery as these. 
And their offspring, the less impossible Regelio-Cyclus group, have 
somehow sold the honour of those silken sad uncertain queens, their 
mothers, for a mess of comfort in the garden. One is glad they are 
such comparatively willing captives, yet even their purchased affability 
one regrets as a betrayal. Nor is it, even in itself, so much to boast 
of ; let them be in deep beds of cow-manure with a foot of hot sand on 
top: so they will thrive and bloom, but will not for long continue, 
unless glass and bells be put over them in winter, a set of precautions 
that turn the garden from a paradise into a kindergarten or re- 
formatory ; and are only permissible when employed to help, as with 
the rare Gentians, but not as the only hopes of prolonging an artificial 
existence, as with the more fractious [rids of the Kast. 
Isatis.—Despite clamours in catalogues no Isatis ever fails to be 
too large and coarse for the rock-garden; JJ. glauca, glastifolia, 
alpina, &c., are sometimes advertised, but are not of value, except 
perhaps in the weed border, where they are tall and stately, with big 
hardy showers of minute golden or white blossom in summer. 
Ischarum, with Biarum, makes up a race of evil Aroids whose 
ominous goblets break through the bare earth of Syria in spring, but 
will not go on doing as much for us unless our gardens and our soil 
and our site be specially hot and dry. 
Isopyrum.—In the woods of Switzerland and Central Europe 
dwells pretty little I. thalictroeides, with dainty bright-green thalictroid 
foliage, a few inches high in early spring, and pearly stars of blossom— 
a delightful plant for any light woodland corner, where it rejoices 
March and then gets promptly out of the way again until next year. 
Not of much merit is J. adiantifolium, but I. anemonoeides is a charm- 
ing thing like a diminished J. thalictroeides, from the rocky woods of 
Afghanistan. IJ. caespitosum and uniflorum are choicer yet—tuffets 
of the rock, with flowers of blue. But the grandest of all is J. Farreri, 
from the cool and danker limestone precipices over the Alps of Koko- 
Nor, Tibet, where in the fast crevices it forms cushions of dainty 
leafage of greyish-blue, more than a foot across, covered in due time 
with a profusion of gold-fluffed flowers like miniature Meconopsids of 
lavender, or purple tinge, balancing on single fine stems of 2 or 3 
inches, in such profusion as to hide the mass from which they spring. 
This most beautiful rarity is by no means difficult to rear from its 
abundant seed; it germinates with readiness, and the seedlings 
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