TEEATMENT OF PEEENNIALS 49 



useful in a garden, especially L. chalcedonica with 

 its flat heads of scarlet flowers, coming in with the 

 Delphiniums and Spireeas in July. L. Haageana 

 follows next in various shades of red and pink, 

 growing from twelve to eighteen inches high, while 

 L. coronaria is a very different looking plant with 

 white woolly leaves and a branching head of 

 crimson flowers in August, about eighteen inches 

 high. The ordinary form is rather too magenta in 

 colour, but there is a dark-red variety, L.C. atro- 

 sanguinea, which is excellent. L. viscaria is again 

 quite another sort of plant, spikes of rose-pink 

 flowers coming out of tufts of grass-like foliage in 

 the early part of June. All these are plants of 

 great effect in their different ways, but they require 

 a damp soil and some shade to show themselves at 

 their best. They can very easily be raised from seed, 

 but slugs have a terrible fondness for L. Haageana. 

 Michaelmas Daisies Asters, as they are properly 

 called, are surely the most varied and delightful of 

 all our late-flowering plants; the early dwarf 

 varieties such as A. alpinus beginning in July; A. 

 acris and A. amellus come in with their charming 

 mauve and lilac flowers at the end of August, 

 followed by the Novce Anglice, and other tall 



