226 SOME FLOWEKING SHRUBS 



lead me further than most readers would care to follow. 

 It is difficult to go wrong with any of them. But a word 

 in season about the herbaceous kinds may serve a useful 

 turn. Spircea palmata will be avoided by the fastidious, 

 for its crimson flowers are in every garden, and the hue 

 is not of the choicest. The variety called elegans is far 

 better, of a delicate roseate tint; but the American 

 Queen-of-the-Prairies (8. lobata or venusta) is more re- 

 fined and is seldom seen. S. rivularis is a fraud; but 

 S. gigantea is splendid in a moist border, like our own 

 meadowsweet, eight feet high. 



