210 HARDY PERENNIALS AND 



summer and autumn months, it helps to keep the borders or rock 

 garden cheerful. 



The flowers, which are lemon yellow, are in form like those of 

 its relative, the strawberry, but smaller; they are produced in 

 terminal small bunches, but seldom are more than two or three 

 open at the same time, and more often only one ; but from the 

 numerous branchlets, all of which produce bloom, there seems to 

 be no lack of colour. In gardens it grows somewhat taller than 

 in its wild state, and if well exposed to the sun it is more flori- 

 ferous, and the individual flowers larger. 



It attains the height of 2ft. Gin. ; the flowers are lin. across ; 

 the petals apart; calyx and bractese united; ten parted; each 

 flower has a short and slender stalk. The leaves are 2in. or more 

 inlength, pinnate, five but oftener seven parted, the leaflets being 

 oblong, pointed, entire and downy; the leaf stalks are very 

 slender, and hardly an inch long ; they spring from the woody 

 stems or branches, which are of a ruddy colour, and also downy. 

 The habit of the shrub is densely bushy, and the foliage has a 

 greyish green colour from its downiness. 



This subject may be planted in any part of the garden where a 

 constant blooming and cheerful yellow flower is required ; it is 

 pretty but not showy ; its best quality, perhaps, is its neatness. 

 It enjoys a vegetable soil well drained, and propagates itself by 

 its creeping roots, which push up shoots or suckers at short 

 spaces from the parent stock. 



Flowering period, summer to early frosts. 



Pratia Repens. 



Syn. LOBELIA PRATIANA ; CREEPING PRATIA; sometimes called 



LOBELIA REPENS; Nat. Ord. LOBELIACE^. 

 IN October this small creeper is a very pretty object on rock- 

 work, when the earlier bloom has become changed into oval 

 fruit-pods. These berry-like capsules are large for so small a 

 plant, and of a bright and pleasing colour. These, together with 

 the few flowers that linger, backed up, as they are, with a 

 dense bed of foliage, interlaced with its numerous filiform 

 stems, present this subject in its most interesting and, perhaps, 

 its prettiest form. 



The flowers may be called white, but they have a violet tint, 

 and are over half-an-inch in length. The calyx is adnate in 

 relation to the ovarium, limb very short, but free and five- 

 toothed; the corolla is funnel-shaped, but split at the back, 

 causing it to appear one-sided. The solitary flowers are pro- 

 duced on rather long stems from the axils of the leaves. As 

 they fade the calyces become fleshy and much enlarged, and 

 resemble the fruit of the hawthorn when ripe. The leaves are 

 distantly arranged on the creeping stems, in. long, oval, roundly 



