12 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



from the Dolomites. Hacquetti is as easy-tempered in 

 good soil anywhere on the rock-work as a weed, and 

 resembles a minute spreading arguta not three inches 

 high, with heads and garlands of little snow-white flowers. 

 It is a neat, tidy little grower, which all who possess it 

 should set to work propagating from cuttings, the beauty 

 and value of it being pre-eminent. I prefer it, so far, to 

 all I have yet seen of the newer, tinier Spiraea caespitosa, 

 which is nearly as dwarf as a moss and, I think, less 

 inspiring. 



As for the Reine des Pres, Spb'aea Aruncus, this great 

 herbaceous species is usually grown as a border plant, in 

 dense clumps. Grown thus, in huge masses, though it is 

 glorious in flowering time with its sheaves and plumes of 

 creamy bloom, it gives you no idea of its wonderful 

 beauty when occurring on some barren wet rock in one 

 single crown, carrying three, perhaps, of its graceful arch- 

 ing leaves, and one feather of flower on a four-foot stem. 

 It was thus that I first saw it years ago in the awful 

 gloom of the Georges de Trient, with three hundred sheer 

 feet of damp cliff on either hand, interlapping as they 

 mounted, to intercept the few faint ghostly rays of day- 

 light that filtered down into that gleaming den of dark- 

 ness. The air was eternally cold with twiliglit and the 

 spume of a roaring torrent, but, wherever plant could find 

 lodgment in the crannies, there Spiraea Aruncus had 

 sown itself, and its isolated spires of whiteness wavered 

 like phantoms in the chill gloaming. So, in my garden, 

 Aruncus, from two huge clumps in the borders above, has 

 sown itself here and there in tiny crevices that admit no 

 increase in tiie size or number of its crowns, and thus, in 

 single spikes, the plant has a rare grace and charm. I 

 am trying, too, following this delightful hint, to make it 

 germinate over the sixty feet or so of creviced limestone 

 precipice that overhangs the lake at Ingleborough where 



