LATHYRUS. 
their value for covering any sunny open slopes in light soil. They are 
hardy, and can be divided at will: a bank dotted with the countless 
blind Daisies of LZ. Forsteri is notably charming in late summer. JL. 
Barkeri has leafy stems ; slighter, smaller-headed, narrower-rayed are 
LL. lanata, petiolata, and pinnatajfida, while L. Commersoni is a neat 
thing from Chili and the Falklands: all are free growers when estab- 
lished, and run about, and freely cover the ground, from which they 
copiously send up their dainty stems of 3 inches or so. 
Lancea thibetica is a small creeping Scrophulariaceous species 
forming a close tuft with rosettes of leathery toothed leaves, and 
violet-blue flowers on leafy stems of 3 or 4 inches, and themselves 
nearly an inch in length. ; 
Lathyrus, a race intermixed with Orobus until each species of 
the one race had better first be looked out in the other. As a rule 
Lathyrus may be held to imply chiefly large and rampant climbers, 
such as L. latifolius, the Everlasting Pea, with its beautiful white 
form, and the gorgeous Californian L. splendens of the same size and 
flowers of dazzling crimson, very large and numerous—this latter 
for a warm, sheltered bank where its 10-foot stems may have room. 
Of others, to pursue the big climbers no further, L. pannonicus must 
be looked for under Orobus Smithii ; L. ornatus, from the Rockies, 
grows some 4 to 8 inches high, often has blue-grey leaves, and carries 
three or four large, fine, purple flowers an inch wide on its footstalks ; 
L. incanus is the same thing, but with a vesture of down ; L. decaphyllus . 
is smaller, woodier, and more branched, with stiff, veined foliage and 
heads of some three to five big purple blossoms. L. roseus comes 
better under Orobus ; L. grandiflorus climbs amid the mountain-woods 
of Greece and Macedonia, Sicily, and Naples, with one to three 
enormous flowers to a stem, the keel being crimson and the wide wings 
purple ; less than this in all parts is L. undulatus ; and L. rotundifolius 
is a smaller L. latifolius from mid-Russia. L. filiformis makes fine, 
erect, wiry growths, with finely divided, almost grassy-looking leaflets, 
and the whole plant in June becomes a waving mass a foot high, of 
delicate loose heads of large blossom in the most beautiful violet-blue. 
This, though erect and not a climber, has the family passion for 
spreading, and in any light soil and open situation offers you the risk 
of no less inexorable a weed than our own L. pratensis of the golden 
flowers. Of the remaining names, most of those that belong to 
species valuable in our domain will be found, like Lathyrus cyaneus, 
under Orobus ; L. inermis is O. hirsutus; L. Linnaei, O. luteus; L. 
venetus, O. variegatus ; L. vernus, O. vernus. In fact, under Orobus 
now go all the non-scandent un-tendrilled species—all, that is, with 
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