MERTENSIA. 
luscious in tones of pure bloomy pale-blue, with lights of shimmering 
bronze and violet—the whole effect completed in summer by its heads 
and clusters of white-eyed blossom in melting tendernesses of china- 
blue and pink and turquoise and lilac. 
M. moltkioeides takes us back again high upon Himachal to con- 
template once more the beauties of M. elongata, of which this is a 
plagiarist but that the whole growth is much more softly hairy. 
And there is a superb variety of this haunting the heights of 
Kashmir at some 11,000 feet, M. m. Thomsoni, with flowers so ample 
as to be half an inch across, and of the usual softly celestial tone. 
M. nivalis is in reality a high-alpine development of M. paniculata. 
It is found at great elevations in Utah, and the leaves are barely an 
inch long, with all the little tuft to match, except for the beauty of 
its porcelain flowers. It stands in fact to M. paniculata as does 
M. Drummondii to M. ciliata; and, in its general effect, oscillates 
between M. lanceolata and M. oblongifolia. 
M. oblongifolia has leaves of narrow oblong outline, and the whole 
clump is fat and fleshy and bluish-grey and smooth. The stems are about 
6 inches high, carrying close clusters of lovely blue flowers, with their 
styles sticking out, and the little threads in their throat as long and 
broad as the anthers. Moist alpine slopes, from Montana to Bniish 
Columbia, coming early into flower at home and in the garden. 
M. ovata may be found in the sub-alpine rocks of Colorado. From 
tufts of broad egg-shaped leaves, minutely roughened above, it sends 
up a number of stems some 8 inches high, carrying heads of blossoms 
crowded upon their quite short foot-stalks. 
M. paniculata is a big stout border-species, in the same line as 
M. ciliata. 
M. papillosa needs little love. It is about a foot high, with roughly 
warted leaves curled over at the edge, and small tubular flowers. 
M. pilosa is only some half a foot tall or less, hairy all over, and 
with erect stems that are usually undivided, hut sometimes branch 
at the top to carry ample blue blossoms, whose lobe is as broad as 
their tube islong. It is found in Arctic America and the Kuriles, &c. 
M. pratensis, from South Colorado and New Mexico, is a good deal 
more than a foot high, with thin-textured, pointed leaves of bright- 
green, and showers of pinky-blue blossoms each about two-thirds 
of an inch across. There is an albino of this (as, indeed, of all; for 
whether they have been seen or not, they assuredly exist in the 
*‘ inexhaustible self-mexhausting Possible ’’). 
M. primuloeides is one of the most beautiful and choice of all, and 
a special delight of the moraine, especially if watered from beneath. 
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