LINARIA. 
minutest sunny crannies, and runs along them and outlines them in a 
delicate thread of green, on which sit violet-pale Toad-flax faces, hardly 
smaller than those of our own, and also persisting through the season. 
L. alpina may always be counted on to accompany you up into the 
high and stony places, though not always into the highest, preferring, 
as a rule, the rougher open stony earth-pans and shingles at mid- 
elevations, from which it often descends far in the river-beds and 
stone-slides, making mats of imperial violet blossom lipped with 
orange flame, crowding out of sight the weak shoots and blue-grey 
delicate fleshy foliage. There are pale forms, too, and one called 
DL. a. rosea, which in reality is like bad lobster-sauce seen by candle- 
light ; and then there is L. a. concolor, which has lost the consecrating 
spot of orange fire, and is all of a lovely but unenlightened lavender ; 
and another form, more beautiful, where the lost flame is replaced by 
a blur of pallor ; and finally a white variety tipped with golden-orange 
on a flower of radiant and breath-taking purity of tone—a most 
precious rarity, and one to be most ardently ensued. All these are 
for the moraine, or light stony bank, where they will be happy, and 
freely seed. The species is not long-lived, but is certainly not annual ; 
nor does it in the garden seem to trouble about lime or granite, though 
in my alpine experiences, while it does not actually avoid the limestone 
ranges, it is far finer and freer and more fiery on the volcanic and 
granitic. No one who has ever descended from the Antermoja Pass 
or ascended the Monzoni Thal can fail to have been struck with the 
sudden eruption of Linaria alpina in a perfect fury of violet and 
flame, the very instant you arrive on the dark volcanic slopes, after 
traversing pale acres of Linaria-less limestones. In cultivation the 
plant, like several of those heights, wants a renewal of soil if it is not 
to lose something in size and vital violence of colouring. 
L. Cymbalaria, our own Toad-flax, while an admissible lovely 
weed for clothing rough cold walls, especially in its albino form, is the 
type of several other species that must for the same reasons either be 
avoided or most carefully used. Of such is L. hepaticaefolia, a really 
beautiful creeper from South Europe, with fleshy marbled leaves of 
kidney design, and abundant toad-flaxes of lilac; but it sends the 
white macaroni of its runners so far, and they grow so robustly from 
the least fragment left remaining in the ground, that the plant should 
only be allowed in far exile from anything at all precious. And of 
the same nature, but yet more beautiful, is L. pallida, unkindly named, 
because its flowers, the largest and the most generously borne in this 
group, are not pale but of a clear lovely lavender and sweet scent, 
sitting close in profusion all the summer over the foliage, which here 
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