170 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part II. 



The preceding include all the kinds that are worth growing, 

 except in botanical and unusually extensive collections. The 

 other kinds enumerated in catalogues are : — C. incanum, lanu- 

 ginosum, ovalifolium, ovatum, tenuifoUum, Wildenovii, and 

 trigynnm. 



CHEIRA.NTHUS CHEIBI.— Wallflower. 



In a book advocating the culture of alpine plants on walls, we 

 must not ignore the claims of the sweet old flower that has 

 so long dwelt on walls and old ruins, hallowing their mouldering 

 remains. It loves a wall.better than any garden ; while it grows 

 coarsely in garden soil, it forms a dwarf enduring bush on an 

 old wall, and grows even on walls that are quite new, planted 

 in mortar. There is no variety of tlie Wallflower yet seen that 

 is not worthy of cultivation ; but the choice old double kinds — 

 the double yellow, double purple, double orange, dark, &c. — are 

 plants worthy of a place beside the finest rock-shrubs or border- 

 plants, ornamental in a high degree, and endeared to us by many 

 associations. These are the varieties most worthy of a place on 

 dry stony banks near the rockwork, and also on old ruins, on 

 which the common kind is likely to find a home for itself. The 

 fine mixed " German " kinds, that are so easily raised from seed, 

 would also be worthy of introduction to ruins and stony places. 

 A packet of the seed strewn in such places would be all that is 

 necessary. Writing of these to the ' Field,' Mr. Henry Kingsley 

 says : — 



"A dim haze of colour. Not gaudy, bright, vulgar, positive 

 colour, but a nearly innumerable number of half-tints, ranging 

 from dull yellow, through brown, into purples ; worth, to an ■ 

 educated eye, all the fantastic barbarisms made out of bad 

 scarlet, bad yellow, and (of all colours in heaven and earth) 

 bright blue (lobelia). There is not more contrast between gaudy 

 yellow and red beds and one of wallflowers (or stocks later on) 

 than there is between Miss Braddon and George Elliot. Some 

 like one, some another. I confess, on my own part, that I like 

 the tint of George Elliot best ; he never allows you to lose one 

 colour until you have found another. On the other hand. Miss 

 Braddon beds out rather too gaudily. I should say that ' Silas 

 Marner ' was very like a bed of wallflowers myself— that is to say, 

 to an eye educated to colour, one of the most beautiful things 

 ever seen," 



