The Garden of British Wild Flowers. 165 



and deservedly employed as a garden plant, and 

 from its rapidity of growth nothing is better adapted 

 for quickly covering objects such as rough 

 mounds, &c. However, it may be most tastefully 

 used in the shrubbery or wilderness, and parti- 

 cularly so on the margin of a river, or water, where 

 the long streamers of its wiry branchlets look 

 effective and distinct at all times. It is the only 

 indigenous plant that affords any idea of the all- 

 embracing and interminable twiners or "bush 

 ropes," that run about in wild profusion in tropical 

 woods ; and in some places in England it grows so 

 freely as to become a nuisance. The most natural 

 looking and prettiest bower I have ever seen was 

 formed by this plant running up a low oak and 

 falling down in thick festoons to the ground ; by 

 pushing the twiners a little aside in the summer, 

 a most agreeable bower was at once formed. 

 There is scarcely any end to what may be done 

 with it in this way. The plant is to be had for a 

 trifle in most nurseries ; it is abundantly wild in 

 the southern counties, and to be had in numerous 

 gardens. 



Next we have the elegant lesser Thalictrum (T. 

 minus) — elegant, I say, because I have grown it, in 

 the open bed, so like the Maidenhair fern that some 



