42 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



sugar-bowl, if you want it to remain in health. Gaul- 

 theria trichophylla is not so much remarkable for its 

 small inflorescence, its furry-looking branches, as for the 

 resulting fruits, which are ridiculously large, and of the 

 most brilliant blue, having the colour and the bloom 

 you see in those of Vitis vulpina. Indeed the fruits of the 

 GauUheria are almost as large as those of a grape. 



For the rock-garden, Mitraria, Fabiana, Fremontia^ 

 Carpentaria are rather luxuries than necessities ; so, too, 

 are Choisya ternata, PerowsJcia, Parrotia, and many 

 another illustrious shrub which it is one's delight to prove 

 hardy. The same, too, must be said of the Olearias, 

 gunniana, stellulata, macrodonta, nitida, and the ubiqui- 

 tous Haasti. But, at the base of a rock-wall one may 

 well grow Rosemary, and especially its delightful creep- 

 ing, rock-hugging variety ; together with Ozothamnus 

 rosmarinif alius, so like Rosemary in its aromatic leaves, so 

 like Aster ereicoeides in its spikes of creamy blossom. 

 Another plant I eye tenderly is Illicium religiosum, from 

 Japan, an evergreen, with pale glossy green leaves, 

 delightfully fragrant if you squeeze them, and then, 

 nestling far down between the twigs, big pendulous 

 blossoms of a ghostly diaphanous white, vaguely recalling 

 those of Chimonanthus in design, and sweet with the 

 tense, bitter sweetness of orange peel. This appears to 

 be as hardy as it is rare and precious, though I have not 

 sufficient experience yet to say the same of the Pitto- 

 sporum, so glorious in great bushes of false orange-blossom 

 along the Italian Riviera. The Abelias, chinensis and 

 Jloribunda, are pretty, graceful rock-garden shrubs, sway- 

 ing heads of pink trumpets, undeniably delicate, though, 

 and untrustworthy. 



Cotoneaster and Euonyrmis (though the mottled sea- 

 side Euonymus is, I think, the plant I most dislike in the 

 world — unless it be the Aspidistra) give us at least two 



