MELANDRYUM. 
have cosseted so long, and say piteously that it never can be Wallichia 
after all. Yet it is—or rather, that terrible disappointment, MM. 
napaulensis (of the Pflanzenreich: really 11. Wallichit fusco-purpurea, 
Hooker, fil.). But no disappointments will cure the courageous of 
continuing to raise M. Wallichii, and planting it out in the damp rich 
ground where this and the others of the Robusta group so richly 
thrive and flourish for their too brief span of splendour. 
The hand of the hybridist should fall of course upon Meconopsis ; 
so far, however, one hybrid only has to be recorded. This is a plant 
raised in Ireland, between M. sinuata “latifolia” and M. grandis. 
Unfortunately, though the plant inherited the perennial habit of WM. 
grandis, the colour got mixed between the two blue-flowering species, 
or perhaps an inferior form was used, for the result was no improve- 
ment on M. grandis. 
Medeola virginica is a Liliaceous plant whose sole merit is 
that its root smells of Cucumber, while its flowers and growth imitate 
an Asparagus. Such a lack of originality is not to be encouraged. 
Megacarpaea, a race of rare Crucifers, with very large arching 
feathered foliage, and thickish spikes of reddish purple or yellowish 
flowers in the early year. Of M. armena it is said by some that it 
comes from the Himalaya, which must surely be a libel; but in any 
case it has a creeping stock and fat basal leaves, and produces the 
flowers of its kind on the rims of the glaciers. And from Kumaon 
comes M. polyandra, with white blossoms, a plant of the easiest culture, 
‘and with magnificent foliage suggesting rare and refined leaves of 
an Artichoke, but not always duly generous in the matter of its 
blossoms in spring. 
Melandryum is a name now embracing many good friends in the 
house of Silene, all of them but one of little worth, but that one of 
more worth than all the Silenes ever seen. We need not linger over our 
common Lychnis vespertina and L. dioica, both of which offer themselves 
for the garden in double forms under the name of Melandryum (though 
the double Melandryum album is a handsome plant and rare in gardens, 
because not easy of propagation). Then there are Arctic and Hima- 
layan species of a singular worthlessness, M. apetalum (Wahlbergella), 
and the almost equally petalless M. nigrescens. But next comes a rare 
and beautiful thing in MM. dicline, from the lower limestone slopes 
of Valentia, but even there uncommon—a bright-green hairy, many- 
stemmed plant of some 3 to 6 inches, with spoon-shaped basal leaves 
on long stems, and flowers solitary at the end of the flopping shoots, 
or in sprays at the tops of twin-branched divergencies. They are 
large and pink, with the lobes of the corolla bi-lobed ; and the plant 
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