The Lunatic Asylum 



a silver-leaved one, is a really pretty thing, and is also 

 allowed an honoured place in the rock garden, and P. 

 nivalis, which is whiter still, and looks very miffy, has 

 been put into the moraine for greater safety, but the grass- 

 leaved Plantain P. graminifolia, and P. asiatica, a very 

 lanky sort of Ribwort, are weird enough in appearance for 

 the Asylum. I have several times found variegated forms, 

 but they have poor constitutions, and never live long. One 

 gloriously blotched cream and green P. media I found on 

 Mt. Cenis was thriving grandly till a bough was blown off 

 the Weymouth Pine overhead, and the end of it pierced 

 the heart of my piebald treasure and it rotted away in a 

 most unromantic fashion. The red-leaved Plantain is a 

 handsome thing when well grown: a form of P. major, it 

 grows into a big plant, and has leaves as red as those of a 

 Beetroot, but with a dull surface to them quite unlike the 

 glossy Beet leaves. The most remarkable, though, are the 

 two Rose Plantains, whose flower-spikes are furnished with 

 leaf-like bracts. The neater of the two is a form of P. 

 media, and bears pretty green rosettes instead of a flower- 

 spike, and I think neither flowers nor seeds. It must be 

 the fifth kind of Gerard's Herbal, of which he writes: 

 "The fifth kinde of Plaintains hath beene a stranger in 

 England, and elsewhere, untill the impression hereof. 

 The cause why I say so is the want of consideration of 

 the beauty which is in this plant, wherein it excelleth all 

 the other. Moreover because that it hath not bin written 

 of or recorded before this present time, though plants of 

 lesser moment have beene very curiously set forth. This 

 plant hath leaves like unto them of the former, and more 

 orderly spread upon the ground like a rose, among which 



