My Rock Garden 



representing the spoiling of two good plants. Above these 

 Storks' Bills and in a crevice is one of the best of all 

 Houseleeks, Sempervivum rubicundum, which reverses the 

 general order of family colouring and has rich red leaves 

 with green tips. It is just now at its best for Spring colouring 

 and wonderfully bright, but is one of the plants that suffers 

 from too many friends, for all who come fall in love with it 

 and carry off a rosette, so that it spreads slowly in the crevice 

 but rapidly into distant gardens. On the level below are 

 some huge rosettes of S. Comollei, another really good one. 

 It makes rosettes as large as those of any Houseleek when 

 generously treated, five inches or more across and of won- 

 derfully beautiful colouring, glaucous green shot with blue 

 and purple, more like an Echeveria than a mere Houseleek. 

 Canon Ellacombe noticed this fine thing in the Jardin des 

 Plantes in Paris, received a rosette from there, and after 

 a few seasons was able to distribute it, and so it came 

 back with me after one of my visits to Bitton. 



A curious plant grows at the corner here, Allium Dios- 

 coridis, often called Nectaroscordum siculum, a tall, strange- 

 looking thing to be one of the Garlicks. It possesses the 

 most pungent and evil smell of any plant I know, and 

 I enjoy breaking a leaf in half and getting my friends 

 to help in deciding whether it most resembles an escape 

 of gas or a new mackintosh. It is already throwing up 

 its curious heads of flowers ; at present they are enclosed in 

 a leafy bag looking like the bud of some very tall Narcissus. 

 Later on they emerge, and the buds hang down and open 

 a few at a time, but after flowering stand upright. The 

 flowers are a shrimp pink marked with green and dull red, 

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