LIBERTIA GRANDIFLORA. 
the far North, and all American. In family they are nearly related to 
Calandrinia, but have much greater beauty, and are well worth a 
sunny place in deep and rather rich soil, lightened with abundance of 
chips. L. rediviva is the best known, a hot-land species, whose narrow, 
Mesembryanthemum-like leaves accordingly die away, to your despair, 
in wisps of dead string, and then miraculously revive, while the 
tuft emits satiny pink cups of blossom on stems of an inch or two. 
L. Tweedyi is the most beautiful of all, and may sometimes be seen 
happy in low and damp places ; it has ample broad leaves, less stiffly 
and fleshily rosetted than the rest, but more upstanding ; while the 
similar flowers, but larger still, arise on stems of 3 inches or so, sug- 
gestive of idealised single tea-roses in the most melting tones of 
apricot, salmon, cream and milk. L. pygmaea is Calandrinia pygmaea, 
with very narrow foliage and small alpine tufts, and silky pink flowers 
of six or eight petals; DL. columbiana, L. brachycalyx, L. Purdyi, and 
L. oppositifolia have beauty, the latter being notably profuse with its 
cups of white in summer; L. Howelliz (in the Moony Mountains of 
Josephine co., Oregon), has wide rosettes of quite narrow fleshy foliage 
greyish-green and elegantly crimpled at the edge, with radiating heads 
on 3-inch stems, of softly apricot flowers, narrow-lobed, and flamed and 
streaked with rose ; while one of the queens of the race is L. Cotyledon, 
in the same line as this last, but with broad plain leaves lying down in 
a neat flat rosette, from which rise rather shorter stems that ray out 
into heads of fewer larger flowers, flesh-pale, with a central band of 
deep rose to each petal. The Lewisias can hardly, as a rule, be pro- 
pagated, unless by division, for which a well-established old clump is 
by far too lovely and precious. 
Liatris, the Gay Feathers of America, may all be planted in light 
open soil, where their tall spikes, set with regular little round flufts 
of bright-purple blossom all the way up their 2- or 3-foot stems in late 
summer and autumn, make a fine effect as they rise in noble spires 
of passionate magenta from the handsome masses of long narrow 
foliage. There are many species, unnecessary to name, as all have 
the same needs, seasons, and habits, while in none is the colour more 
friendly ; the least in height is L. spicata of only a foot, or a foot and 
a half, small and sturdy, suggesting some strange autumnal Orchis. 
Libertia grandifiora is a most stately New Zealand Irid, quite 
happy here, but at its best in deep rich soil in a warm garden, where it 
makes enormous clumps of sword-like foliage, like a massed Phormium 
in miniature, from among which proceed, in late summer, long broken 
spikes of three-petalled-looking flowers of clean ivory-white, free 
and beautiful and steadily succeeding each other through the season. 
(1,919) 449 2F 
