MENZIESIA. 
beautiful Labiate, uncommon in England, but by no means so in the 
foothills of the Southern Alps, where, however, it varies in forms, some 
of which are not worth the wear of looking at, by comparison with the 
best. In these the plant sends up a single stem, set with pairs of 
ample leaves, and then, near the top, few-flowered whorls of very 
large blossoms of the most vivid white and pink, with ample lip and 
showy helmet, the whole being like a sainted Dead-nettle of inordinate 
magnificence. In some ranges, e.g. the Dolomites, the prevalent 
form is pure-white. This can be raised from seed, or in due course 
divided, and succeeds excellently in any light cool loam, where it grows 
a foot high or less, and flowers in full summer. 
Mentha.—The Mints are of no value, but Menthella Requieni is a 
microscopic jewel from Corsica, which you put in a cool, damp 
level place and then wholly forget about, but that you think the spot 
is covered with some minute and bright-green lichen ; till some day you 
tread that carpet, and are assaulted by the delicious pungency of mint. 
The plant needs no attention, for, if killed in a hard winter by chance, 
it will assuredly have sown itself; the little violet mint-flowers appear 
in August, and the whole carpet has an air of some exceedingly wee 
Mazus, foreshadowing the same needs and treatment. 
Menyanthes trifoliata, the Common Buckbean, is admirable 
for pervading shallow waters with its branches of handsome trefoil 
leaves, and then in early. summer sends up its heads of open waxy 
pearly cups filled with white surf. In Sitka there lives another species 
(sometimes called Villarsia), M. Crista-galli, which has greater leaves, 
as it were those of Nymphaea, and spikes of fluffed cups as close as 
in Aponogeton. This will also want the same watery life as its 
common cousin. 
Menziesia, however you may elect to pronounce it, means a 
race of little fir-foliaged heaths, from the tips of whose shoots proceed 
large bells of pink or mauve on delicate foot-stalks. One of the most 
celebrated is now lost to the name, in the person of the former UM. 
coerulea, now become Phyllodoke taxifolia, though none the less still 
a precious treasure of the Sow of Athol in Perthshire; and, as the 
generic names vacillate in this group between Phyllodoke, Bryanthus, 
and Menziesia, this last shall here be made to cover a multitude of 
sins. All the species then in this kind are of fairly easy culture in 
peaty stony ground open to the sun and kept well watered; their 
height is measured in inches, and their blossoming season is through 
the summer. Most delightful of all, perhaps, is the commonest, MW. 
empetriformis, which may be seen as happy in gardens as in the stony 
places of the Rockies, forming neat bushes a foot across and 9 inches 
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