My Garden in Spring 



you look closer you see the flowers are of an unfamiliar 

 shape, more like those of some large Sage or Dead 

 Nettle, but not a labiate ; indeed, it is a plant hard to place, 

 for its relations, the Orobanches, are not as a rule well 

 known to gardeners. The fact that it is a parasite makes 

 it difficult to establish. First, one must find a suitable 

 host in a suitable place, and with roots in a condition 

 to be pounced on by the Lathraea. Poplar and Willow 

 are the most likely trees to prove hospitable to it, but 

 it is a queer, cranky sort of plant, and you cannot 

 reckon on what it will do. After careful planting it 

 may apparently die away, and then after two or more 

 years some January day may reveal its white scales 

 leaves it has none breaking through the ground perhaps 

 a yard away from the place you planted it in ; a few 

 years later still, when seeds have had time to form 

 and fly and grow, it may appear, healthy and vigorous, 

 far from the range of the roots of the tree. I know 

 of an instance where it chose to board itself out on a 

 Gunnera, and in Cambridge Botanic Gardens it thrives 

 as well across the streamlet in the grass as on the other 

 side among the willows. Here I chose a Weeping 

 Willow for its foster mother, thereby paying off a small 

 grudge I owed it. I made a luxurious bed of good 

 soil at its feet some years ago for Japanese Irises, but 

 the Willow said, " First come, first served," and ate up 

 the fatness and starved out the /. Kaempferi, filling the 

 bed with its fibrous roots. Among these I planted a 

 sod or two of Lathraea, some of them kind gifts from 

 Mr. Lynch, others sent by my Spanish cousins, and 

 later on some seeds also from Cambridge. I cannot 

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