Geraniums Of Geraniums there are a large number of beautiful kinds, 
for the Wild natives of Great Britain and Europe, which make strong 
Garden perennial plants, and can be grown easily and quickly from 
seed. Our wild Geranium—pratense—varies a good deal in 
colour, I fancy, with its soil. In Yorkshire this year I saw 
patches of it growing by the roadside, which were almost as 
blue as grandiflorum and most lovely in effect with Meadow- 
sweet and Wild Roses. Two other native varieties— 
fancastriense, pale pink or flesh colour with purple veins, and 
sylvaticum, with mauve, or occasionally white flowers—are worth 
growing. The white form of Rodertianum is also charming ; 
this seeds itself profusely and is one of those useful plants which 
establish themselves in crannies of a brick wall. Names of the 
garden varieties seem to be a good deal confused, and one needs 
to be sure what variety one is introducing, as some are of an 
ugly magenta tone. This may be partly because nursery- 
men very often do not distinguish—at all events in their 
catalogues—between blues, mauves, or even purples. One 
authority, for instance, describes G. zbericum as “rich purple with 
dark veins,” and another the same variety as “ large deep blue.” 
There is a dark—almost claret—variety, with finely pencilled 
black veins, which I found unnamed in a garden, and am still 
trying to identify. The white ones also are very pretty, but 
again there seems uncertainty about the names. These would 
be excellent for growing with grandiflorum, which is un- 
doubtedly the best and clearest of the blues. 
Geraniums always recall to my mind the hayfields of 
Monte Generoso, where the tall mauve variety is such a feature, 
though it contends for its effect with so many other flowers. 
If only these Alpine hayfields could be reproduced, the problem 
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