128 THE WILD GARDEN. 
places. The nearly allied Arum Lily (Calla ethiopica) is quite hardy 
as a water and water-side plant in the southern counties of England 
and Ireland. 
Silkweed, Asclepias—-Usually vigorous perennials, with very 
curious and ornamental flowers, common in fields and on river banks 
in North America and Canada, where they sometimes become trouble- 
some weeds. Of the species in cultivation, A. Cornuti and A. Douglasi 
could be naturalised easily in rich deep soil in wild places. The 
showy and dwarfer Asclepias tuberosa requires very warm sand soils 
to flower as well as in its own dry hills and fields) A good many of 
the hardy species are not introduced ; for such the place is the wild 
garden. Some of them are water-side plants, such as A. incarnata, the 
Swamp Silkweed of the United States. 
Starwort, Aster—aA very large family of usually vigorous, often 
showy, and sometimes beautiful perennials, mostly with bluish or 
white flowers, chiefly natives of North America. Many of these, of an 
inferior order of beauty, used to be planted in our mixed borders, 
which they very much helped to bring into discredit, and they form a 
very good example of a class of plants for which the true place is the 
copse, or rough and half-cared-for places in shrubberies and copses, and 
by wood-walks, where they will grow as freely as any native weeds, 
and in many cases prove highly attractive in late summer and autumn. 
Such kinds as A. pyreneus, Amellus, and turbinellus, are amongst the 
most ornamental perennials we have. With the Asters may be grouped 
the Galatellas, the Vernonias, and also the handsome and rather dwarf 
Erigeron speciosus, which, however, not being so tall, could not fight 
its way among such coarse vegetation as that in which the Asters may 
be grown. Associated with the Golden Rods (Solidago)—also common 
plants of the American woods and copses—the best of the Asters or 
Michaelmas Daisies will form a very interesting aspect of vegetation. 
It is that one sees in American woods in late summer and autumn 
when the Golden Rods and Asters are seen in bloom together. It is 
one of numerous aspects of the vegetation of other countries which the 
“wild garden” will make possible in gardens. To produce such effects 
the plants must, of course, be planted in some quantity in one part of 
a rather open wood, and not repeated all over the place or mixed up 
with many other things. Nearly 200 species are known, about 150 
of which form part of the rich vegetation of North America. These 
fine plants inhabit that great continent, from Mexico—where a few are 
found—to the United States and Canada, where they abound, and even 
up to the regions altogether arctic of that quarter of the world. 
