302 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part II. 



any soil, and forming attractive beds in the spring garden. They 

 are also worthy of being planted in semi-wild places, but do not 

 deserve a place in the select rock-garden except where more . 

 valuable plants are very scarce. 



PUSCHKINIA ^CUSL,OrD'SS,.—Sdlla-Uke P. 



A FASCINATING fairy plant, and the most delicately beautiful 

 thing in the way of a spring bulb that I am familiar with ; 

 the flowers white, striped and tinged with a. delicate blue, the 

 small prostrate leaves concave ; easily grown too — more so than 

 the Squills ; it does not last long in flower, but few spring flowers 

 do. The best position for this is on low banks, in the rock- 

 garden, or in' positions where its delicate flowers may be seen 

 somewhat beneath the eye, associated with dwarf Primulas, the 

 Rush Daffodil, and other diminutive spring flowers. A native of 

 the Caucasus, flowering in spring, easily increased by division 

 of the root, and flourishing best in very sandy light soil. 



PYEOLA 'ROTVN'DlFOIjIA.—Larg-er Wintergreen. 



A RARE native plant, inhabiting woods, shady, bushy, and reedy 

 places ; with leathery leaves, roundish or broadly oval, very 

 slightly toothed, and erect stems, bearing long and handsome 

 slightly-drooping racemes of pure white fragrant flowers, half an 

 inch across, ten to twenty flowers being borne on a stem from 

 six inches to a foot high. Pyrola rotundifolia, var. arenaria, 

 is another very graceful plant, found wild on sandy sea-shores, 

 and differing from the preceding in being dwarfer, deep green, 

 and smooth, and generally with several empty bracts below the 

 inflorescence. Both are beautiful plants for shady mossy flanks 

 of rockwork, in free sandy and vegetable soil, and flourish 

 more readily in cultivation than any species of their family. In 

 America there are varieties of this plant with flesh-coloured and 

 reddish flowers, none of which are in cultivation with us. 



Pyrola uniflora, media, minor, and secunda, are also interest- 

 ing British plants, of which the first, a very rare one in oiu- Flora, 

 is the most ornamental. P. elHptica, a native of North America, 

 is also in our gardens, though rare. Any of these plants that 

 can be obtained are worthy of a place in thin mossy copses on 

 light sandy vegetable soil, or in. moist and half-shady parts of 

 the rockwork or fernery. 



