MYOSOTIDIUM NOBILE. 
and snowfields cf Chelmos and Parnassus, differing in having larger 
flowers that do not hang, but stand out horizontal from the spike, and 
have much broader whitish teeth, much more recurving. 
M. Aucheri is very near, but dwarfer, only 2 or 3 inches high, but 
with shorter leaves too, and hardly any foot-stalks, so that the balls 
sit tight in a dense round head. 
M. pallens has quite thready leaves and is especially dwarf; with 
pendulous blooms oi white or pale-blue in close heads. 
M. parviflorum, from the Balearics, &c., has especial importance, 
and may be known at once. Jor it is the only one of the race to dis- 
play its pale-blue bells in autumn. 
The following group approaches Bellevalia in having the bells less 
pulled in at the mouth than usual: 
M. pycnanthum is merely a M. neglectum with more gaping-lipped 
blossoms. 
M. discolor has heads like a nut, of violet flowers, white-edged and 
almost bell-shaped at the mouth. 
M. acutifolium has leaves of 5 inches long or so, narrowing to their 
base instead of embracing the stem; the flowers are intense violet, 
not urn-shaped, but deeply cloven, and with the teeth not recurving. 
The above list will guide collectors among the best-known species. 
There remain other good kinds, of course, such as the vivid blue 
M. atlanticum, not to mention the monsters and livid towzle-spikes 
and the sad straw-yellows, all of which, as specialities, will be de- 
scribed in the lists that offer them; but they by no means compete 
in beauty with the ordinary Grape-hyacinths, nor are everywhere so 
to be relied on for permanence as the ordinary species, which cannot be 
outraged, but are lovely through the early year (M. botryoeides rises 
at dawn) in bed or grass or border, and intoxicating in the cool vinous 
sweetness of their dark and heady scent. Then, after flowering, they 
die down harmless long before their decadence runs any risk of being 
a nuisance. All increase freely and can be raised from seed like cress. 
Myosotidium nobile is the county-flower of Cornwall, a most 
respectable plant that occupies the thoughts of the county to the 
exclusion of everything but Daffodil and tender Rhododendron. 
M. nobile dwells in the far sands of the Chatham Islands, which 
have long since gladly abandoned it to Cornwall; it is like a vast 
and glossy gross Funkia in the corrugated bright-green foliage, with 
fat stalks of 2 feet high among it in May and June, opening bunches of 
blossoms suggesting those of some gigantic Forget-me-not that has not 
500 
a a ites 
