MERTENSIA. 
high, of fine shoots, ejecting showers of delicate rose-pink bells in 
summer. M. Brewert, close beside the lake-edges and by the cool 
snow-drips from overhanging banks in the Sierras of California, makes 
dense masses of small upright packed shoots like erect yew-twigs, 
ending in lovely clusters, round and close, of dainty rosy globules ; 
while M. Gmelini in the wilds of Siberia and Kamchatka follows a 
different principle, and is like-a prostrate Heath with the leaves of a 
thyme, with its sprays ending in loose showers of pink bells. As to 
the propagation of these last, the famous recipe for hare-cooking 
applies; for M. empetriformis, this may be multiplied by careful 
division in the later summer, if the plants be large enough. 
Mertensia.—A good deal of confusion has at times prevailed 
among the members of this glorious race, almost all of which are 
choice delights, wanting well-drained ground, moist beneath; they 
flower, for the most part, in early summer, are generous in setting seed 
and in germinating. The family is entirely a mountaineering one, 
across the high ranges and polar fringes of the Old World and the New. 
M. alpina has lent its name to many species that wrongly bear it. 
The true plant belongs to high altitudes in the Colorado Rockies ; it 
is some 6 inches in stature or less, almost hairless, and bluish-grey im 
tone, with radical leaves unstalked and about an inch or two in length. 
All the leaves are oblong or almost paddle-shaped. The flowers are 
at first in a close head, but afterwards shake themselves free to show 
their wonderful beauty of brilliant soft azure-blue. 
M. amoena is a variety of M. Bakeri, q.v. 
M. Bakeri also belongs to the mountains of Colorado. It stands 
about half a foot or a foot high, the flowers are borne in crowded 
clusters, the stalks of the basal leaves are longer than the leaves 
themselves, and the whole plant is vested in fluffy fine down. 
M. brachyloba stands very close to M. lanceolata, from which it 
differs chiefly in having broader lobes to the beautiful blue stars. 
M. brevistyla grows some 4 to 8 inches high ; it is all downy with 
short pressed hairs, and the blossoms are of a gorgeous deep blue, 
borne in loose sprays. 
M. ciliata is none other than the species we often grow as M/. sibirica. 
It has the quality of being as easy to grow as a Dandelion, of sowing 
itself about the garden, and of blooming all through the later summer. 
For these qualities, however, it has sold much of the charm that is 
the birthright of the race. For it is a leafy lavish blue-green mass of 
a couple of feet high or 18 inches, and though the flowers are borne in 
the uttermost profusion on the branches and shoots, so as to form a 
loose airy fountain, and though in themselves they are beautiful 
486 
