March Winds 



Kerner, but that leg-mending period may some day reveal 

 them among their pages. 



Pulmonarias make a good bold edging to a shrubbery 

 or bed of coarse herbaceous plants : the saccharata forms 

 are perhaps best used thus, as their handsome leaves 

 survive ordinary winters so cheerfully. P. arvernensis is 

 best in the rock garden, and it and our native P. angusti- 

 folia, which I have collected in the New Forest, die down 

 entirely in winter. 



Among other brave plants that take the winds of 

 March amicably Hacquetia (Dondia) Epipactis is a good 

 thing for a shady corner. It looks at first sight like a 

 green Hellebore, but a closer glance shows that the 

 golden centre is an umbel of small yellow flowers set in 

 an involucre of green leaves, and is almost an Astrantia, 

 and only just saved from such a relationship by a very 

 slight difference in the shape of the fruit. It has a very 

 bright and cheerful appearance in these nippy, cold days, 

 when its glossy green leaves and yellow heads take the 

 place of the Winter Aconites, but it increases slowly, and 

 so is never seen in profusion. 



Adonis amurensis should also be making a show, but 

 slugs love its fat round flower-buds when they are first 

 through and still a bronze colour, and they often lose 

 their hearts as early in the day as the heroine of a penny 

 novelette. The double forms are quaint and interesting, 

 but always flower later than the far prettier single form. 

 Several Corydalis species join the procession now. C. 

 angustifolia is generally first, an ivory white, and too 

 delicate-looking a thing to be out so early ; then follow 

 the more robust creamy white C. Allenii and C. bulbosa 

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