LOISELEURIA PROCUMBENS. 
countless fine naked stems of 3 inches or less, each carrying the most 
dainty pale butterfly of a Lobelia blossom, in shades of gentle blue and 
white. Though this be from New Zealand it is of perfect hardiness, 
even proving a nuisance if too happily established in the neighbourhood 
of something small and choice, but itself the best possible of carpets 
for choice small bulbs. It has a rare cousin, L. Roughii, of much the 
same habits and beauty, filled with bitter milk of unkindness, and 
creeping among the shingles of the South Island up to 6000 feet. It 
may be known by the two dorsal petals (the upper lip) being divided 
to the base. Both species have a fancy for a pinch of peat. 
Loiseleuria procumbens is a little alpine Azalea, trailing tiny 
flat masses, like a small glossy leathery thyme, in close carpets over 
the high alpine turf, and starring them with clusters of natty waxen 
cups of soft pink and rose. Though it holds the same eminences on 
the Scotch Alps it is by no means an easy plant to acclimatise in the 
garden, requiring specially careful collecting, careful re-establishment 
_ of its woody root, and then a sunny position in light and elastic 
stony peat, well-watered in spring, but absolutely sharp and perfect 
in drainage. 
Lotus.—The common Ladies’ Fingers will not need an introduction 
to your garden, being usually more in need of a chucker-out, but 
L. Gebelia, with pea-flowers of pink, may have its uses for a warm dry 
slope, while to wander about in a damper lower one is predestined 
the lonely-blossomed Lotus with large flowers of peculiarly moonlit 
clear yellow, which you may sometimes see in the grass by the road- 
sides in the Alps, and which is L. siliquosus, when not rejoicing 
in its more stately title of Tetragonclobus siliquosus. LL. creticus, 
montanus, and cytisoeides, are taller things of no value. 
Lubinia lubinioeides (so happy a thought of some fertile mind 
to call a plant the Lubinia like a Lubinia—what else, then, should it 
be like, pray ?) is also Lysimachia maurantiana, an African species of 
no possibilities in English gardens. 
Lupinus.—The tall herbaceous and shrubby Lupines have their 
place, but America breeds a vast race of decumbent Lupines often 
excelling in beauty of flower or leaf, and easy of cultivation in very 
light soil on a warm and well-drained bank. They are not always 
easy to raise from seed, having a tendency to miff off; nor is their 
span of life always as handsome or long as their span of spike. L. 
decumbens and L. argenteus have for a time rejoiced us with their spires 
of lavender blue, in summer rising 6 inches or so from the sheeted mass 
of foliage, often beautifully silvered ; and yet others among the many 
that we do not yet possess are L. caespitosus, a dense cushion of silver- 
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