ISO ALPINE FLOWERS. Part II. 



flowers. Other species are in cultivation which are unworthy 

 of a position in any but a botanical collection, and there are 

 various names erroneously applied to several of the Icinds above 

 enumerated. 



ARCTOSTAPHYLOS TS^h.-'UBS,\.—Bearberry. 



A SMALL and prostrate but neatly creeping mountain shrub, 

 somewhat resembling the Cowberry in aspect, but with the 

 leaves more leathery, and their under side beautifully netted 

 with prominent veins, and with the sepals at the base and not 

 at the crown of the berry. The flowers are of a delicate rose- 

 colour in clusters at the apex of the branches ; the berries of a 

 brilliant red, somewhat smaller than a currant. It is a native of 

 rather dry heaths and barren places in hilly countries, and is 

 much easier to cultivate than almost any other small mountain 

 or bog shrub, thriving well in common garden soil, though it 

 prefers a moist peaty one. I have noticed two forms in cultiva- 

 tion, one making compact tufts, the other much more rambling 

 and somewhat larger and looser in all its parts. It is a useful 

 plant in the large rock-garden, when it's shining evergreen 

 masses, of leaves fall over the face of rocks, and also on the 

 margins of beds of shrubs and on borders. 



The Black Bearberry {^A. alpind), a plant very rarely seen in 

 cultivation, a native of high alpine or arctic regions, and of 

 the northern Highlands of Scotland, distinguished from the 

 preceding by its thin toothed leaves, which, unlike those of its 

 relative, are not evergreen, but wither away at the end of the 

 season, and by its bluish-black berries, is not so ornamental as 

 the preceding, though it is a welcome plant in botanic gardens, 

 or with cultivators of rare British species. 



AEENARIA "ZtJ^S^KSUGK.— Balearic Sandwort. 



This coats the face of rocks and stones with the dwarfest 

 thyme-like verdure — clothes them with living beauty as the 

 Ivy does the mouldering tower, and then scatters over the 

 green mantle countless httle starry flowers on slender stalks a 

 little more than an inch long. I write this sitting on a rock 

 to which its tiny carpet clings closer than the dwarfest moss. 

 Beneath some rocks fall to the water ; it has crept over the edge 

 of these, and dropped its little mantle of green down to within 



