10 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



flowers, which hails from North America. And the last 

 of these minute Brambles — which it seems almost an 

 insult to one's intelligence to think of as shrubs — is our 

 own native, Rubus Chamaemorus. The Cloudberry dwells 

 in great colonies on all the high moors of Northern 

 England, Scotland and Scandinavia, hardly descending or 

 bearing any descent below two thousand feet. It abounds 

 on the saddle of Ingleborough, and again immediately 

 below the precipitous western face, but I have never yet 

 made any success with it in my garden, short as it must 

 find the journey thither. It has lived several seasons, 

 indeed, but rarely flowered, and never fruited. And 

 the fruit is its great attraction. The plant is about 

 six inches in height, with two or three rounded leaves. 

 Black-currant-like, thick and solid. The big white flower 

 stands solitary at the top of the stem, staring upwards. 

 And there, in time, forms the fruit, ripening about 

 August — an enormous raspberry of fewer and larger 

 carpels, russet-red at first, then ripening to a soft, golden 

 amber — when its taste has the sparkling acidity of the 

 Pomegranate. Unfortunately the grouse so share my 

 love for its juices that it is very rarely, on Ingleborough, 

 that I have enjoyed the Cloudberry ; and I have never 

 been permitted that Enough which is so fallaciously 

 described as being as good as a feast. 



Of big brambles there are many — vast invasive weeds 

 for the most part, which must be banned by all who do 

 not possess unlimited acreage of wilderness. Rubus leuco- 

 dermis is handsome — tall, with white- washed stems; the 

 new flagelliformis has whip-cord shoots of eight or ten 

 feet ; hypargyrus I only have in seedlings ; nuikamis and 

 bifiorus are magnificent plants for the wild garden, but 

 cannot be allowed in any choice territory. They are 

 much alike, tall, dense growers, fearfully rampant, with 

 big, green currant-like leaves, and very big flowers, which 



