38 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part I. 



exquisite plant-life, it need not be pointed out where oppor- 

 tunities may be found for developing it. 



The dwarfer and succulent alpine plants are capable of afford- 

 ing beautiful and distinct effects from their neat foliage and 

 habit alone, and the introduction of them is one of the most 

 rapidly growing improvements now taking place in our flower- 

 gardens. A few years ago they could only be found in very 

 few gardens ; now they may be seen in abundance in Battersea 

 Park, and many other places about London where flower- 

 gardening is well carried out ; and, a demand having arisen 

 for them, they may be seen in great variety in some of our 

 London nurseries. 



The term " succulent " may not be familiar to every reader. 

 It is applied to plants with stems or leaves of a very fat and juicy 

 texture, and in which soft cellular tissue greatly predominates. 



Fig. 33. — Raised beds with mosaic work of alpine succulents. 



Usually in botanic gardens the term is applied to the Cactuses, 

 Aloes, Agaves, Mesembryanthemums, and plants of like cha- 

 racter, so very different to the types of vegetation we are ac- 

 customed to in this country. Thus the house in which these 

 plants, chiefly from South Africa, South America, Mexico, 

 and various warm parts of the world, are gathered together at 

 Kew, is called the " succulent house." It would be difficult 

 to find anywhere a house more worthy of a visit or more re- 

 markably striking than this, containing, as it does, a vast collec- 

 tion of the plants that to our eyes seem the most singular of all 

 that exist on our world at its present stage. But there are many 

 other succulent plants than those mostly well-armed and spiny 

 monsters from hot countries. The little Spider-webbed Semper- 

 vivum, that clothes the rocks on many a wild and cold alpine 

 slope, is a succulent as well as the enormous Cactus {Cereus 

 giganteus) which, rising like a great branching pillar to a height 



