MY SHRUBS 123 
stand anywhere provided the soil be fairly moist. My plant thrives 
in peat, though peat is not essential. It sets three-celled seed-pots, 
but does not bring them to full size and ripeness here. 
Xanthorhiza apifolia is another hardy monotype from North 
America. This little deciduous shrub has light pinnate foliage 
and racemes of very minute dark florets which appear in early 
spring. It is worth a corner in a rockery, for the growth is modest 
and it will always remain a dwarf. 
Of Xylomelum, the Wood Apple, I have had the wooden, 
pear-shaped fruits brought to me from Australia, and striven to 
germinate the seeds, but failed to do so. This is a bush shrub, or 
tree, of the Protea order, probably not in cultivation. 
Xylosteum Philomile is an evergreen fly honeysuckle, with pink 
flowers in early Spring. 
With Zanthoxylum we approach an end. This genus, known 
as the Prickly Ash, or Toothache Tree, is a large one represented 
over most of the world. Whether the evergreen prickly and aromatic 
leaves of my plant—Z. planispermum—or its little clusters of red 
carpels in winter, or the bark of the shrub, are good against 
toothache, I cannot find. It flags under frost, but soon pulls itself 
together again when the cold has passed. This most handsome 
foliage plant prospers in half shade. 
Zauschneria californica, the Californian Hummingbird’s Trumpet, 
may be called a sub-shrub, though its habit is herbaceous. The 
downy, grey foliage and scarlet tubular flowers make a fine mass 
on the sunny rockery. I cut my plants back hard in autumn, and 
they break again, travel underground, and rapidly increase. 
Zenobia, so called after the great Empress—a noble name really 
worth keeping—is now lost, and the shrub, so well worthy to bear 
