PAPAVERACEAE 55 



Adiantum farleyense ; the flower-stems reach to five feet 

 or more at their best, and carry far on down the season a 

 wide foaming mass of white blossom, which, in one form, 

 is pale purple. No plant is handsomer for the big bog- 

 garden, or the cool border. Ddavayi is a novelty, and a 

 little uncertain so far. It seems everything that it should 

 be, and in growth is like a dense robust minus, with 

 leaves of a metallic bronzy grey. The abundant flowers 

 are of a very pretty, soft mauve, and large enough to 

 make quite a feature. 



Isopynim thalictroeides is a wee cousin of the Thalic- 

 trums, very close to them, and of perfectly easy cultivation 

 in light loose soil, rather poor than rich. The plant is 

 quite small and graceful, with the fine, dainty greyish- 

 green leaves of its kind, and three or four charming little 

 white flowers carried on short foot-stalks, very early in 

 the season. It is a Swiss plant, but not, I fancy, very 

 common. I have never seen it wild, and believe it to be 

 rare — at all events in Western Switzerland and the Ober- 

 land. 



This, I think, covers nearly all the Ranunculaceae that 

 are valuable in the rock-garden. The little false Aconite 

 of early spring is too common, and the big true Aconites 

 too large and too wicked to find any place in the rock- 

 garden. One need not look twice at any Monkshood to 

 see that he is an evil, poisonous person. So away with 

 them all, unless you admit the beautiful white Levantine 

 alburn, or the new twining volubile. 



Sanffuinaria canadensis, with its variety called mc^or, 

 is so like a cousin of the Buttercups and Anemones that 

 he must certainly come next. He occupies a certain peaty 

 bed in the Old Garden underneath my big bushes of 

 Magnolia Kobus and Magnolia Watsoni. The Canadian 

 Bloodroot is so called because he bleeds. When you dig 

 up his fleshy tubers they ooze gore in a most unpleasant 



