3o6 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part II. 



are borne in panicles ; each flower is of the purest waxy-white 

 colour, three to four inches across, and in shape and aspect is 

 like a Brobdingnagian Buttercup. We imagine there would be 

 no great difficulty in growing the plant if we once got it here. 

 To this end we should be disposed^ in addition to more ordinary 

 methods of transport, to try several means, such as sowing the 

 seeds in a Wardian case, or placing them in a closed bottle in 

 damp moss or moistened earth. At any rate, ' moist shady 

 gullies ' in New Zealand mountains must no longer be suffered 

 to have the monopoly of so grand a plant as this." — ' Gardener's 

 Chronicle.' "When it is readily obtainable in this country, no 

 doubt it will form a grand object for moist, depressed, sheltered 

 places in the neighbourhood of the rockwork or hardy fernery, in 

 deep moist soil. It grows from two to four feet high. 



EANDNCULUS M.ON'SKSXSS.— Mountain Buttercup. 



A PLANT with dwarf compact tufts of deep green, glossy 

 leaves, deeply divided, and with obtuse lobes, covered in spring 

 with a dense mass of brilliant yellow flowers, somewhat larger 

 than those of our common Buttercup [R. acris). Although so 

 like a Buttercup in tone, it is unlike it in its dwarf compact 

 habit, usually flowering at three inches high, and, though 

 growing freely enough, not spreading about with the coarse 

 vigour of many of its fellovfs, each little stem bearing one 

 flower, A native of alpine pastures on the principal great 

 mountain-chains of Europe, growing freely in moist sandy 

 soil on rockwork, on which it should be planted so as to form 

 spreading tufts, or in lines in chinks or ledges. Readily increased 

 by seed or division. 



RANUNCULUS PABNASSIPOLIUS.— i'arwajJM-Zzfe R. 



A HANDSOME and distinct kind, with beautiful pure white 

 flowers like those of R. amflexicdulis, from one to a dozen or 

 more being borne on each stem, which, according to soil and 

 position, grows from two to eight inches high, and is somewhat 

 velvety, and of a purplish tone. The leaves are entire-margined, 

 but of a dark brownish-green, oval-heart-shaped, or occasionally 

 kidney-shaped, in outline, sometimes slightly woolly along the 

 margins and nerves, and not so graceful as those of if. amplexi- 

 caulis. The roots are long, fibrous, and numerous, united in a 



