THE WHITE ROCKERY 83 



weak, and the slugs help them. There must be a 

 great deal of difference to the slug palate in the 

 flavour of sedums. Some prosper untouched ; others 

 are browsed down to the last green atom. I am 

 unfortunately not botanist enough to grasp and 

 understand all the distinctions between sedums and 

 sempervivums, cotyledons and echeverias. What is 

 far worse, I don't care. Other succulents interest me 

 much more than these. Once I had fifty, and I plunged 

 their pots into a heap of sand during the summer, and 

 pretended that it was the desert. In the midst of my 

 desert rose an oasis of six phoenix palms one foot high. 

 These were grown by me from Biskra date-stones. The 

 desert disappeared early in October as a rule. Now 

 it has disappeared altogether ; because people laughed 

 at it, and we gardeners are so horribly sensitive. My 

 phylocactus group was only turned out upon the Sahara 

 after flowering. Gasterias, haworthias, and some aloes 

 bloom in winter ; the stapelias during summer. 



Nature came to most extraordinary grief with my 

 stapelia grandiflora. It opened a sinister, starfish- 

 shaped blossom hairy, and of the colour of chocolate. 

 The thing was lovely, but its odour a little harassing. 

 People fled before my carrion flower, and marvelled 

 how I could encourage it or be proud of it. But 

 tastes differ : certain mother blue-bottles delighted in 

 the blossom, and, having no botany, thought stapelia 

 was something quite different. They buzzed there in 

 appreciative crowds, and one laid her eggs in the very 

 heart of the flower, so that the infant larvae should 

 have simple, nourishing food at hand when they came 



