274 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part II. 



North America, inhabiting damp woods. It is, perhaps, better 

 known in gardens as P. stolonifera and P. verna than by its 

 proper name. 



PHLOX STJBU'LATA.— i^foJJ Pink. 



A MOSS-LIKE little evergreen with stems from four inches to 

 a foot long, but always prostrate, so that the dense matted tufts 

 are seldom more than six inches high except in very favourable 

 rich and moist, but sandy and well-drained, soil, where, when the 

 plant is fully exposed, the tufts attain a diameter of several feet, 

 and a- height of one foot or more. The leaves are awl-shaped 

 or pointed, and very numerous ; the flowers of pinkish purple or 

 rose colour, with a dark centre, so densely produced that the 

 plants are completely hidden by them during the blooming 

 season. It occurs in a wild state on rocky hills and sandy 

 banks in North America, and there are few more valuable 

 plants for the decoration of the spring garden borders or rock- 

 work, being at once hardy, dwarf, neat in habit, profuse in bloom, 

 forming gay cushions on the level ground, or pendent sheets 

 from the tops of crags or from chinks on rockwork. It is easily 

 increased by division, forming roots freely at the base of the 

 little stems, and usually thrives in ordinary garden soil, particu- 

 larly in deep sandy loam. Excessive drought seems to injure it, 

 but it is less likely to suffer when rooted beneath the stones on 

 rockwork. There is a white variety {P. subulata alba), known in 

 many gardens as P. Nelsoni, which is also a beautiful plant. 



PINGUICULA GRANDIFLOEA.— /rzjA Butterwort. 



Leaves in rosettes, light green, fleshy, and glistening, oval-oblong 

 and obtuse, broadest in the middle ; flowers handsome, two- 

 lipped, spurred like the Horned Violet, more than an inch long, 

 nearly or quite an inch across in well-grown specimens, of a 

 fine violet blue. Mr. Bentham unites this with the much less 

 beautiful P. -vulgaris, but Mr. Syme says : " I cannot conceive 

 how anyone who has seen the plants alive can consider them 

 as the same species ; " and as P. grandifl'ora has flowers twice 

 as large as vulgaris, and is a much handsomer plant, it is cer- 

 tainly distinct, and the kind by far best worthy of cultivation. 

 It inhabits bogs and wet heaths in the South-west of Ireland, 

 and delights in moist mossy spots on the northern and shady 



