2o8 ■ ALPINE FLOWERS. Part II. 



choice rock-garden. I only introduce it hei-e to say that its best 

 use is for naturalisation in shady spots under trees and shrubs. 

 Where the branches of specimen trees are allowed to rest on 

 the turf of lawn or pleasure-ground, a few roots of these scattered 

 over the surface will soon form a dense carpet, glowing into 

 sheets of yellow in the very dawn of spring. It will also cover 

 any bare place under trees, and thus we may enjoy it without 

 giving it positions suited for rarer and more fastidious plants, or 

 taking any trouble whatever about it. 



ERICA CKB.TH'F.h..— Spring Heath. 



One of the most valuable plants of the spring Flora of our gar- 

 dens, forming dense, neat, dwarf tufts of shoots ; these, in the very 

 .dawn of spring, become covered with rosy-red ilowers, which, in 

 the bud state throughout the winter, seem to await the coming of 

 the first fine and sunny days to fully blush into masses of colour. 

 It thrives best in peat, but often also in ordinary garden soil. 

 It is becoming very popular, and is much grown with American 

 shrubs in nurseries, and often used as an edging to beds of these 

 plants. It should be grown in every garden, either in isolated 

 tufts, in borders, or around shrubberies. On rockwork masses 

 of it cushioning over the edges of rocks on the sunny side look 

 charming in spring. A native of the Alps, and nearly allied 

 to E. mediterranea. Indeed," some consider them varieties of 

 the same species, but for garden purposes they are sufficiently 

 distinct, as I have seen the last attain a height of five feet, in 

 gardens where E. carnea spread about dwarfer than the com- 

 mon Thyme. It is also much hardier and more ornamental. 

 The plant found in Ireland \E. hibernica — Syme), and which is 

 sometimes united with E. carnea, is also very distinct, being 

 much larger, less hardy, and not an early-flowering species. 



The varieties of our common British Heaths afford exquisite 

 beauty of colour. There are a number of forms of the common 

 Ling {Calluna vulgaris), v^xy pretty and dwarf; then there 

 is the showy and beautiful Scotch Heather {Erica cinered), 

 always attractive in a wild state, but particularly so in its variety 

 coccinea; and there are the following varieties in cultivation — 

 alba, atropurpurea, coccinea, rosea, and rubra. Erica Tetralix, 

 the large-flowered E. ciliaris, the white variety of the Irish 



