My Rock Garden 



from thence, and the hard gravel path may remind them 

 of their former home, for they grow much better in it than 

 in the border, keeping a neater habit and resisting winter 

 wet better. Geranium atlanticum is making a brave show 

 of blue flowers shot with red ; it does not grow in the 

 Atlantic Ocean as an ingenious friend imagined its name 

 implied, but on Mount Atlas. It is not sufficiently well- 

 known, as the beautiful, finely-cut leaves appear with the 

 autumn rains and make a charming carpet to otherwise 

 bare spots, and Crocuses, especially autumnal species, seem 

 quite happy growing among the leaves. The moraines 

 were described in a former chapter, but I must show you 

 how charming Dianthus microlepis and Freynei are in the 

 edge of the Farrer moraine. Microlepis is a flat tuft of grey 

 set all over with stemless flowers of a rosy-salmon colour, 

 reminding one of Silene acaulis in the Alps, whose green 

 pincushions are here among the granite chips but refuse 

 to wear any pinheads of flower buds in this lowland 

 garden. D. Freynei is a white-flowered counterpart of 

 microlepis as I know it, but I have some doubts as to their 

 distinction, and should never be surprised to find that both 

 my plants were but colour forms of one and the same. 

 Linaria alpina sows itself amiably among its betters, and 

 most of the plants are the self-coloured lilac form called 

 v. concolor, descendants of some collected on Mt. Cenis, 

 and they vary a good deal in the shade of lilac and the white 

 or grey of the spots that decorate their rabbit-shaped noses 

 instead of the glowing orange ones of the type. Lewisia 

 parviflom is flowering in a dry overhung corner, and but 

 for belonging to so renowned a family would not be 

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