MUSCARI. 
clump of many stems, quite bare, and daintily branching from the very 
base into looser sprays of blue. It extends from rocky and muddy 
places of the Southern and centtal Spanish mountains into Piedmont 
and the South of France. The true Mulgediums are plants of vast 
foliage and vast stature, most suitable for filling the wild garden 
(where they ramp amazingly), but far too large and invasive for the 
rock-garden. Among such—and all are. very handsome, with great 
heads or spikes or showers of big blue-purple, porcelain, or lavender 
flowers in summer, on stems of architectural proportion above foliage 
that leaves the Acanthus humbled though horny—are MM. alpinum, 
Plumieri (quite succulent, hairless, and hollow), giganteum, Bourgaex 
(especially pretty and rather neat, not ramping, but sending up 3-foot 
stems, set loosely ail up with lovely blossoms of soft pearly blue), 
iataricum, macrophyllum (M. grande of gardens). And, of Lactuca, 
LL. adenophora, Morsi (of enormous height as a rule, from rich 
ground in Massachusetts), Steeli, pulchella; of Indian species, DL. 
graciliflora (specially ample and beautiful), rapunculiflora, decipiens, 
bracteata, hastata (purple or dark red), macrcrrhiza (very big, blue- 
purple), Lessertiana (almost the same but of neat 12-inch habit, freely 
branching), pulchella (of a foot or more, with violet flowers, from the 
Rockies), macrantha (magnificent in blossom, yet only about 2 feet 
high) ; all of these last being now to be included in Mulgedium, but even 
more to be desired than such as we possess, being evidently neater 
as a rule in their habit, but no less sumptuous in their flower. Some of 
our well-known species, such as MV. giganteum (often wrongly sent out 
as the smooth, succulent, and hollow-stemmed M. Plumiert), are growers 
so dense and rank that in the garden they burn away all the herbage 
beneath, and nothing is left in winter but a sere black patch like the 
remains of a bonfire. Accordingly they are of the greatest value as 
cover for snowdrops, which come up in the bare ground and then are 
admirably dried off as the jungle develops—a hint which ought 
to be a pointer to the possible use of the big Mulgediums as nurses 
for rare and mimpish small Narcissi, such as N. Bulbocodium 
monophyllus and N. viridiflorus. 
Muscari.—The Grape-hyacinths need no commendation, and 
uncommonly little cultivation. Nor are they infrequent in catalogues. 
At the same time a brief note of their differences among themselves 
may help enthusiasts in knowing what they are trying to get, and 
whether they have got it. In the first place, Muscari may always be 
known from Hyacinth and Bellevalia by the constricted mouth that 
gives them their characteristic Rugby-football shape of flower; and 
after that (in botanical, not alphabetical, order) :— 
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