LIGULARIA. 
KXindred species are L. formosa and L. ixioeides, of the same habits 
and temperament. 
Ligularia, huge and statuesque Senecios for the wild garden or 
the bog, all the species there having their value, either in spiked yellow 
spire of 5 feet high, or in tropical amplitude of foliage; but having 
little anywhere else, owing to their overweening habit. 
Ligusticum, another huge-growing group, this time of Umbelli- 
fers, whose name makes us long only for the two superb species of the 
race that have their sole refuge in the uttermost parts of the sea, where, 
even up to the mountains of the Aucklands, towers great L. speciosum, 
like a 6-foot Angelica, with heads, wide and spreading, of the richest 
rosy-mauve or purple, all exhaling aromatic sweetness on the desert 
air ; while nearer to the sea in moist places lives the looser-headed but 
still bright-purpled LZ. antipodum, with foliage no less splendid, but 
this time more finely divided so as more to suggest a gigantic Fennel 
gone to glory. 
Lilium.—We will not turn our overburdened eyes in this direc- 
tion, lest we should never be able to turn them away again, for thinking 
of the hot limestone rocks in the far South where L. pomponium hangs 
among the brushwocd in balls of scarlet fire, above the dancing clear- 
blue flames of Aquilegia Reuieri ; or the alpine meadows filled with the 
stark and stalwart chimes of L. Mariagon; or the dark sombre cliffs 
of the Cottians where L. croceum finds root-home where none can be, 
in the smallest ledges of the cliff, till up and down the sheer and 
terrible walls twinkle at you from afar a thousand little sparks of 
flame that are the golden goblets of the lily, held up to catch the 
daylight in the darkness of the precipice, and radiate it forth again 
in living fire. But are there not books of such matters, to be bought 
for ls. 9d.% Let these then be purchased ; for indeed Lilium is no 
special race for the rock-garden, and, though all its members are 
always and everywhere to be desired and worshipped, they are not 
so special for the rock-garden as for beds especially made on their 
behalf, where their cult may be unstinted and unchallenged. 
Linaria.—Catalogues and lists are filled with names of Linaria. 
Many of the Toad-flaxes offered, however, are more toad than flax— 
weeds irrepressible, or annuals, or dowdinesses. Let the wise rock- 
garden avoid such; let it even in prudence avoid the magnificent 
ramping species, such as L. purpurea or L. repens, that tall invasive 
beautiful pest with its dwarfer and rather less violent albino variety. 
L. aequitriloba is a Tiny Tim of extraordinary charm. It is the 
miniature of the common Toad-flax, looked at through the wrong end 
of a telescope—a minutely wee thing from Corsica, that fits into the 
450 
