LAURENTIA. 
which we are immediately concerned. Those that here remain may 
copiously be raised from seed, and grown with almost excessive ease. 
It must be remembered that they are usually either big or vast, ill 
fitted by stature and invasive habit for any choice place or usurpation 
of the foreground. 
Laurentia, a race of small Lobelias, all of paludose proclivities 
and much charm. America sends us L. eximia, and Spain, L. Micheli, 
which grow in the wet places of their respective countries, sending up, 
in summer, leafy stems of some 2 to 6 inches, bearing little Lobelias, 
which are pale-blue in L. Micheli, and dark-blue with a golden fold in 
L. eximia. The most beautiful of them, however, is the even daintier 
L. tenella, of damp places and sphagnum beds in Southern Europe, 
which grows quite happily with us in any cool (and sometimes even in 
any hot and dry) place, often seeding itself into chosen corners, and 
making neat, tiny rosettes of foliage, from which spring, all the summer 
through, a profusion of naked fine stems some 2 inches or more in 
height, each one carrying the most delicious and fairy-like Lobelia of 
soft china-blue, outlining the star of its clear, pale eye, most dainty 
and elfin to behold. Seed. The life of Laurentia, though truly 
hardy, is probably not long. 
Lavandila.—The large common Lavender is hardly, perhaps, 
well placed in the rock-garden, but the dwarf form, sometimes called 
compacta nana, is very neat and tidy in growth, with a lovely unani- 
mous outbreak of 9-inch spikes in summer, emitting much larger 
flowers than the type, in a tone of much more brilliant purple. It 
should be grown in full sun, kept cut into shape, and propagated by 
cuttings. Even sweeter and more delicious in its intense fragrance 
is L. lanata from the Sierra Nevada, where it is abundant in the 
crevices, especially on limestone, with masses of woolly snow, and 
long broken spires of violet ; and there are many other minor Lavenders, 
all of the south. 
Ledum.—The Labrador Teas are neat little shrubs with neat 
evergreen foliage, and neat heads of white flower in early summer. 
Their place is in limeless soil with Heath and Rhododendron ; in the 
solfataras of Noboribets in the Hokkaido, L. labradoricum is so far 
from being attached to terra firma that it grows on the volcanic crust 
that is hopping all the time beneath it like the lid of a kettle. Other 
species are LL. glandulosum and palustre, but though useful and 
pretty, they all have a smug and stolid look, suggesting the kind of 
person who is always described as “‘a thoroughly nice girl, and such 
a help to her mother.” 
Leiophyllum buxifolium isa pretty comely American shrublet 
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