276 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part 11. 



tance. On good garden soils generally it will be found almost 

 as «asy of culture as the common form. It is, however, apt to 

 go off on a very wet clayey soil, but flourishes finely in deep rich 

 but well-drained loam. As regards the propagation, it is effected 

 by simply digging up well-established old plants, pulling them 

 in pieces, and then planting them immediately in a nursery-bed 

 of good soil. This is best done in early autumn, so that it may 

 be nicely established in the nursery-beds before midwinter. 

 Where plants are riierely required for borders and rockwork, 

 the old stools simply require to be taken up, divided, and 

 replanted, where desired, in the old-fashioned way of dealing 

 with herbaceous plants. As the variegated variety is grown for 

 its leaf beauty alone, it is scarcely necessary to add that the 

 flower-stems should be removed when they appear. There are 

 several other species in cultivation, but they are scarcely of 

 a sufficiently perennial or ornamental character. 



POLYGALA CALCAEEA.— C^a//^ Milkwort. 



A NATIVE plant found in Kent, Surrey, Gloucester, Berks, and 

 a few other places in the South of England, generally on chalky 

 d6bris, and very pretty, usually with blue but sometimes with 

 pink or whitish flowers, about a quarter of an inch long, in 

 compact racemes ; the leaves deep shining green and smooth, 

 and the shoots six inches long in well -grown specimens. 

 Mr. Syme says this has no connecting links with the common 

 Milkwort {P- vulgaris). It is known by the flowering shoots 

 rising from rosettes of leaves, and by the leaves on those shoots 

 becoming abruptly smaller and narrower than those below them. 

 It is the handsomest and the easiest to grow of the British spe- 

 cies, and does very well on rockwoilc in sunny chinks, planted 

 in calcareous soil, forming neat dressy tufts of violet-blue and 

 white flowers, and blooming profusely in early summer. It should 

 be allowed to sow itself if possible, or the seed may be gathered 

 from wild plants and carefully sown in sandy soil. Plants care- 

 fully taken up from their native positions have also been esta- 

 blished in gardens. 



POLYGALA C&hM.MS,\ys.X5^.— Box-leaved Milkwort. 



A VALUABLE little Creeping shrub, a native of the Alps of 

 Austria and Switzerland, where it often forms but very small 



