My Rock Garden 



is trained up poles and is now about nine feet high. Here I 

 grow a good many of the giant Eryngiums, such as serra 

 with rosettes of green, two-edged saws, agavifolium with 

 sword-fish snouts for leaves, Sanguisorba with glaucous 

 grassy leaves and flower heads, anyone might be forgiven 

 for believing to be a true Sanguisorba ; Lasseauxii, the 

 giant of the family, with narrow leaves six feet long, 

 looking like some great Pandanus, and a set of queer 

 hybrids that defy classification and have taken up posi- 

 tions where I could permit them to remain and deve- 

 lop. A few good Yuccas share the bank with these, 

 and lead one's mind gently on to the Prickly Pears and 

 other Cacti, Bromeliads, Dasylirions, Agaves, and other suc- 

 culents for which the rest of this bank is reserved. We 

 must stop to admire two Oxalis species that grow among 

 the Eryngiums. Oxalis purpurea is full of flowers which are 

 large and crimson by courtesy, but rather close to magenta 

 I fear in fact, a colour I can forgive in an Oxalis though 

 not in a zonal Pelargonium. Just above it 0. brasiliensis 

 is only commencing to flower, and is a better shade of 

 crimson. These two have lived amicably in this nook for 

 many years, and are very brilliant in Spring, and look well 

 among the subtropical foliage around them, though neither 

 would be pleasing near scarlet flowers. Cereus paucispinus 

 is full of fat flower-buds promising a gorgeous patch of scar- 

 let for next month, and several of the Echinopsis section 

 of Cereus show grey tufts of wool where their large white 

 or pink flowers are to come. The young growths of the 

 Opuntias have not yet taken on the round outline that means 

 flowers or flattened out to show they are only fresh branches. 

 257 R 



