THE ROCK-GARDEN 95 



garden for the hardy Opuntias. They are the more 

 desirable in that they are not only the sole repre- 

 sentatives of the large Cactus family that are hardy 

 in England, but that they are also desirable flowering 

 plants, of large bloom and moderate habit of growth. 

 The family comprises so many species of monstrously 

 ungainly or otherwise unsightly form that it is for- 

 tunate for our gardens that the hardy species should 

 be beautiful things. 



Opuntia Raffinesquii has long been with us, and 

 more lately we have had the good yellow-bloomed 

 species O. camanchica, arenaria, fragilis, and Engel- 

 manni. To these with yellow flowers have been 

 added still later O. rhodmithe and O. xanthostema. 

 They are all North American plants, most of them 

 natives of Colorado. They like a place among steep 

 rocks in a soil of poor sand and broken limestone, in 

 the hottest exposure. The only thing they dislike in 

 our climate is long-continued rain, from which the 

 steep rock-wall in a great measure protects them, by 

 means of the complete drainage that it secures. 



We have a fine example of good rock-gardening 

 accessible to the public in the Royal Gardens, Kew. 

 Here there is not only a copious collection of moun- 

 tain plants of the kinds suitable for rock-gardens and 

 their immediate neighbourhood, but we see them as 

 well arranged as is possible in an establishment that, 

 it must be remembered, is primarily botanical ; indeed 

 the way in which the gardens have been of late years 

 enriched with large breadths of bulbous plants in 



