54 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



Close cousins to Anemone are the Thalictrums, of 

 which our limestone fells abound with one, minus, in 

 foliage hardly less graceful than the better-known 

 adiantifolium, and gracious, in June, with tall, airy 

 showers of yellowish tiny tassels. You will see it waving 

 from the inaccessible cliffs of Sulber and Gordale ; nor 

 does it offer any sort of difficulty to the gardener. Our 

 other interesting native (Jlavum is rather a coarse, gawky 

 thing) is microscopic Thalictrum alpinum. from Upper 

 Teesdale, a wee, delicate, inconspicuous high-alpine which 

 you may cultivate carefully in a select peaty corner. 

 Anemonoeides is a real beauty, with big Anemone-like 

 white flowers, which, I don't know why, has never yet 

 done much with me. It has a good reputation, too ; 

 perhaps the fault is mine for having only tried it in the 

 Old Garden. Some day I will attempt it again in the 

 new one. Light soil, well drained, in a sheltered choice 

 corner, is recommended for this. Of the larger sorts I 

 have a great love for petaloideum (and hope great things 

 of polygarmmi and foliohsum and chelidoniifolium, re- 

 ported splendid). Petaloideum has beautiful glaucous 

 grey leaves, which unfold at first rather like those of 

 Sanimculus rutaef alius, and then, on stems about a foot 

 high or more, heads of large cream-white flowers, rather 

 like those of the Traveller's Joy on a lessened scale. 



This plant likes any border soil. But the most gener- 

 ally valuable for large-scale gardening is unquestionably 

 Thalictrum aquilegifolium. So splendid is this, and alto- 

 gether admirable, that I cannot restrain my enthusiasm 

 for it until I come to the greater bog-plants. One finds 

 T. aquilegifolium in damp alpine meadows all Switzerland 

 over, and in cultivation it takes very kindly indeed to any 

 cool deep loam, forming, in time, enormous clumps that need 

 no care. The leaves are very large, pale green, magnifi- 

 cent as so many broad spreading plumes of a magnified 



