14 MY SHRUBS 
of North America, has made a splendid specimen with me, and is 
a showy object when covered with its flower masses in October. 
The variegated form of A. Spinosa is also handsome. 
Of Arbutus, the austere bush, I have but the familiar A. unedo 
—a thing very fair to see with the scarlet fruit and little snowy 
bells, like lily of the valley, hanging side by side in the dark, 
shining foliage. There are many species, and some fine varieties 
for the cold house, but nothing beats the strawberry tree. That 
nice little plant of the same order as Arbutus: Arctostaphylos, 
the bear’s grape, will not live with me. A. uva-ursi is a fine 
dwarf shrub or trailer, but, like other good things from the high- 
lands, cannot suffer gladly this climate. Maybe I do not grow 
it wet enough, for a companion plant, Oxycoccus palustris, the 
native cranberry, flowers and fruits in a bog not five yards distant. 
There is a Nevada arctostaphylos that makes a fine shrub five feet 
high, but I know not if it has found its way to English collections. 
With Ardisia I have done nothing. A. japontca is the hardiest, 
but it made no show in a snug corner here, and never recovered a 
moderate winter. Possibly, treated like certain of my favourites, 
which are plunged in their pots through summer and returned 
to the cold house before November, it might flourish; but one 
cannot do too much of this work, and on the whole Ardisia, of 
Japan, does not appeal to me as worth it. A. macrocarpa, from 
Nepaul, is a very notable shrub for the stove. 
Aristea, of the order of Ividacee, may seem to have no place here, 
but A. corymbosa, from the Cape, has a shrubby habit of the most 
charming and original character, and its clusters of deep blue 
flowers sparkle in the sword-like foliage at late autumn. It needs 
peat and sand and a bell-glass in winter. 
