172 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part 11. 



its appearance or culture, but it would be seen to much greater 

 advantage if people would transplant a few tufts of it from 

 the matted and often exhausted beds in which it is usually 

 grown in the kitchen-garden to half shady and half wild spots 

 near their gardens, alongside of wood walks, where it would 

 become naturalised among low shrubs on the fringes of the 

 rock-garden or hardy fernery. It might also, be planted in tufts 

 among American plants or other choice shrubs, as in any of 

 these positions its graceful beauty will be more appreciated 

 than when it is seen in a formal mass, grown as prosaically as 

 kitchen Thyme or Spearmint, while ■ its delicious odour will be 

 spread over the place. Of course, planting it in this way need 

 not prevent its being grown in quantity for cutting, though, if 

 sufficiently plentiful in the positions mentioned, there would be 

 little occasion to grow it in any other way. Of late it has been 

 deservedly much forced in hothouses in early spring. There is 

 a variety with double flowers, one with single rose flowers, one 

 with double rose flowers, one with the leaves margined with a 

 silvery white, and one richly striped with yellow — all of which 

 are worthy ef cultivation. Although growing in almost any 

 soil, it prefers a deep sandy loam enriched with leaf-mould, and 

 loves a partial shade, notwithstanding that it thrives well in the 

 full sun. 



CONVOLVULUS JSCS.S^K'iTSQ.— Dwarf Silvery Bindweed. 



This, so far from having any of the free-climbing tendencies of 

 our common wild Convolvulus, is quite a pigmy compared to 

 the dwarf and popular C. minor — the whole plant often showing 

 nothing but a tuft of small silky rather narrow and pointed 

 leaves above the ground. Among these appear in summer 

 delicate flesh-coloured flowers more than an inch across, 

 and in fuU perfection at less than three inches high, though 

 in warmer soils and districts than those on which t have 

 observed the plant it sometimes grows an inch or two higher. 

 Few subjects are hardier or more suitable for embellishing 

 some arid part of the rockwork near, and somewhat under, the 

 eye, as its beauty is not of a telhng, though of a high, order. A 

 native of the Mediterranean region ; easily increased by dividing 

 the root. 



