My Garden in Spring 



garden hold some of the rarer varieties, and most beds of 

 permanently planted, mixed plants are annually receiving 

 the overflow from the Crowded patches, as I do love to 

 carpet bare spots under deciduous shrubs and round 

 tall-growing things with such plants. The ordinary wild 

 nemorosa is worth collecting from different districts, as it 

 varies greatly in shape, tint of colour, and time of flower- 

 ing, and keeps up its old customs in the new home. I 

 have a very early form and a very late one, and the common 

 type of the Cotswolds, which has the outside, especially of 

 the buds, more or less pink, and of a charming creamy- 

 rosy tint. It is so noticeable in the bud stage, when the 

 flowers still hang their heads, that one of the most noted 

 botanists, when first shown them in a Gloucestershire wood, 

 mistook them for a Cyclamen. 



Two varieties are listed as rubra and rubra fl. pi., but 

 though they are worth growing they open quite white, and 

 only flush to a red as they age. The red, it must be con- 

 fessed, is rather too cold, and suggestive of that little devil 

 whose name is Legion as well as Magenta who too often 

 possesses and ruins pink flowers. They are both effective 

 when contrasted with white and blue forms, and seem to 

 linger on longer than the white ones, loth to shed the 

 flowers that have gradually deepened to such a fine colour. 

 The so-called fl. pi. is not much more than semi-double, 

 having at its fullest no more than a second row of sepals. 



There -is a dainty little pure white one called Vestal 

 which Herr Max Leichtlin sent out into the world, but I 

 do not know where it originated. The anthers are nearly 

 as white as the sepals, and make the flowers look like A. 

 trifolia, but the leaves are those of nemorosa right enough. 



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