LITHOSPERMUM. 
the most dazzling clear pale azure, all over the leafy mass of trailing 
shoots, which in a way, though greener, recall those of L. purpureo- 
coeruleum in loose procumbent habit ; but the flowers are not borne 
in heads, and are much larger, lighter, lonelier, and more lovely. 
English gardens will have a surprise when L. japonicum is at last in- 
troduced—if only it will behave here as in the woods below Nikko, or 
even as it gleamed in long dropped strings of turquoise among the 
grasses of the high downs at the foot of Fuji, or amid the strange 
orchids that gloomed upon the islands of Matsushima, between the 
sundown fires of Azalea mollis, and the cool lilac-purple smoke-wreaths 
of Wistaria, reflected in the ripples of that dreaming sea. 
L. Kotschyi belongs to the rocks of South Persia—a very dwarf 
tight hoary bush of 6 inches, with bright blue flowers. 
L. multiflorum and L. longiflorum (if true difference indeed there be), 
are two more Americans from Colorado and the lower Rockies. 
L. multiflorum is about a foot high, often coarsely bristly, and carrying 
its blossoms in wide branching showers, these being bright clear yellow 
and with short round lobes. Culture, &c., as for the other yellow 
Americans, of which this is the most obscure and difficult species to 
decipher, if not to grow. (L. californicum is of the same stature, but 
softly hairy and not bristled.) 
L. oleaefolium is a most precious and not particularly easy Litho- 
spermum of extreme beauty that is but rarely seen. It is rare in the 
cliffs of the Catalonian Pyrenees on both sides of the frontier (La Muga, 
S. Amio), and makes a dwarf diffuse mass of shoots, not more than 
6 inches high, with the leaves especially bundled at the tips of the 
branches ; they are narrow-oval, green and shining, and with white silk 
below. The flowers are few and rather large, in a cluster at the ends 
of the shoots, of a specially lovely opalescent violet, with shifting 
lights of blue and pink to deep and pale. Those who have grown it 
well shall advise upon its culture. It is not a thing as easy to meet 
with as dullness or folly, nor as easy to keep as a plain daughter. 
L. parviflorum (Moltkia)—This is exactly like our cherished MVer- 
tensia echioeides, but that the spikes are denser and the corolla-tube 
shorter with the filaments protruding. (Kashmir, 6000 to 8000 feet.) 
L. petraewm (Moltkia)—It might be hazarded that this plant is 
commoner in gardens than at home, where it is of most rare occurrence, 
in the Alps of Greece (as on the face of Oeta looking eternally down 
upon Thermopyle). Well worthy is the Lithospermum, ‘so to name 
her what she lawful is,” of such a spectacle, being a neat woody bush 
of a foot or more, with pale leathery narrow leaves to the tips of the 
shoots, and abundant heads of beautiful pale-blue and purple flowers. 
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