CHAPTER XX. 



THE BOG GARDEN. 



THE bog garden is a home for the numerous children of the wild 

 that will not thrive on our harsh, bare, and dry garden borders, but 

 thrive cushioned on moss or in moist peat soil. Many beautiful 

 plants, like the Wind Gentian and Creeping Hairbell, grow on our 

 bogs and marshes. In North America, even by the margins of the 

 railways, one sees, day after day, the vivid blooms of the Cardinal- 

 flower springing erect from the wet peaty hollows ; and far under the 

 shady woods stretch the black bog pools, the ground between being 

 so shaky that you move a few steps with difficulty. And where 

 the woody vegetation disappears the Pitcher-plant (Sarracenia), 

 Golden Club (Orontium), Water Arum (Calla palustris), and a host 

 of other handsome bog plants cover the ground for hundreds of 

 acres, with perhaps an occasional slender bush of Laurel Magnolia 

 (Magnolia glauca) among them. 



Southwards and seawards, the bog flowers, like the splendid 

 kinds of herbaceous Hibiscus, become tropical in size and brilliancy, 

 while far north and west and south along the mountains grows the 

 queen of the peat bog the beautiful and showy Mocassin-flower 

 (Cypripedium spectabile). Then in California, all along the Sierras, 

 a number of delicate little annual plants continue to grow in small 

 mountain bogs long after the plains are quite parched, and annual 

 vegetation has quite disappeared from them. ^But who shall record 

 the beauty and interest of the flowers of the wide-spreading marsh- 

 lands of this globe of ours, from those in the vast wet woods of 

 America, dark and brown, hidden from the sunbeams, to the little 

 bogs of the high Alps, far above the woods, where the ground 

 often teems with Nature's most brilliant flowers? One thing, 

 however, we may gather from our small experience that many 

 plants commonly termed " alpine," and found on high mountains, 

 are true bog plants. This must be clear to any one who has seen 

 our pretty Bird's-eye Primrose in the wet mountain-side bogs of 

 Westmorland, or the Bavarian Gentian in the spongy soil by 

 alpine rivulets. 



177 M 



