18 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



Japanese treasures that I nurse in my rock-garden. And 

 nothing — not even if they grew to the size of St. Paul's — 

 should deprive me of the Japanese Cherries, single and 

 double, rosy, white, and yellow (though the Yellow 

 Cherry, indeed, is more alluring in idea than in reality, 

 being of a faint, greenish-sulphur shade, which is very 

 effective on a big, well-flowered tree, but mean and 

 depressing on a small, young specimen). 



Of the other Cherries, the dwarf rare Cerasus pro- 

 strata, is best for the rock-garden, while of the Plums, 

 glorious Mumi is, I begin to fear, of uncertain flower- 

 ing in my climate, like several of the Pyruses, which 

 perhaps I don't treat properly, especially Pyrus spec- 

 tabilis, the most beautiful of all, of which young plants 

 from Japan blossomed last season till their frail 

 branches creaked beneath their burden of rose and ruby 

 snow — and this year are nothing but shoot and leafage. 

 Perhaps pruning will help the Japanese Plum. Or does 

 it require more summer ripening.? In Japan it makes 

 so bewildering a spectacle of beauty through grey, icy 

 March, that one would spare no pains to have it in 

 England doing likewise, if possible. The two giant 

 plants in my shrubbery are two specimens I bought for 

 a shilling each at a night-fair in Tokio. They lived in 

 my house for a fortnight — sheer indistinguishable balls 

 of white and pink. Now they have shot up and 

 about like Jack's beanstalk, waving enormous whip-cord 

 shoots. And they each average perhaps five blooms a year. 



The same trouble attends my culture of Chimonanthus 

 fragrans, that most heavenly - scented of all heaven- 

 scented flowers. Long had I known of it, and never 

 seen it, till one day I walked in a certain lovely garden 

 on the Genoese Riviera. And there, in a cold, shaded 

 corner, chill with January's frost in unsunned aspects, I 

 was transplanted to heaven on tiie wings of an ineffable 



