My Garden in Spring 



to transplant when elderly. The large, pale-flowered form 

 is the most effective to plant freely, but there is a good 

 one often sold as A. H alien, with even finer cut leaves 

 than the common form and deep purple flowers. It looks 

 well mixed among the others, but is not Halleri, which may 

 be easily recognised by its silky pinnatifid leaves. I have 

 lately got as A. rubra a deep chocolate-red form of Pulsatilla 

 that is very distinct, but some sad fate has always decreed 

 the destruction of the white form just as it was settling 

 down here. The most frequent cause of failure here 

 among the Pulsatilla family is some evil but undeter- 

 mined underground animal that eats holes in the collar 

 of that plant which are followed by decay and a sudden 

 flagging of leaves, and if the injured part is not at once 

 removed the whole plant is liable to rot off. A very fine 

 old clump of the form called A. pratensis montana has 

 lost more than three-quarters of its many crowns in this 

 way this season. This is a very tall growing variety with 

 nodding flowers of very deep purple : unfortunately they 

 do not open widely enough to be as beautiful as they seem 

 to promise, but the seed heads are very fine, great balls 

 of grey-green feathers borne on stems two feet in height. 



I struggled for years with A. sylvestris, and got for my 

 pains thin carpets of rather unattractive leaves, and after 

 a season or two a bare centre and an ever-widening circle 

 of the flowerless tufts. Then the var. baicalensis came, 

 and I thought was better, as though rather stingy in the 

 way of bloom it generally produced a half dozen or so 

 that were pretty with their rosy purple exterior. Then 

 some ten years ago I got the var. grandiflora from a Con- 

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