CRUCIFERAE 61 



either hand; the prettiest Fumitory I ever saw in my 

 life still dwells among the dead leaves round a Korean 

 monastery high on a hillside, buried in forests (the only 

 forests now left in Korea, for the pious monks have 

 respected what the foolish peasants have everywhere else 

 destroyed). Does any reader know this Corydalis, I 

 wonder? In early March it gleamed here and there 

 amid the fallen leaves — the daintiest little flower, with 

 fairy-like, frail foliage, and a few rather large blossoms of 

 a delicious violet. It has a small bulbous root, but all 

 my efforts to bring it back into cultivation proved vain. 



The vast Natural Order of the Cross-bearers evidently 

 thinks that in providing us with all our important vege- 

 tables it has done quite enough for humanity. For few 

 other Natural Orders are horticulturally so barren of 

 charm ; among the Cruciferae that one can use in the 

 rock-garden — or, for that matter, in any other flower- 

 garden either — there are astonishingly few of any great 

 merit (such as Aubrietia, Aethionema, and lonopsidion), 

 and but few of any merit at all. The race is, generally 

 speaking, an open-ground one, found most abundantly in 

 the Old World, and such Cross-bearers as we like to use 

 are generally quite easy of culture. 



The greatest and most important group is that of the 

 Aubrietias, plants of the very first rank for any sunny, 

 light, and not too choice corner of the garden. I have 

 them all over the place as edgings to the stone-work, 

 where they look lovely in their time — so many cushions 

 or ton-ents of rose, carmine, or violet. By now the 

 species have been swamped with garden-raised varieties, 

 and these, in turn, occur perpetually in almost every 

 batch of seedlings, so that every one will do well to buy 

 packets of some good Aubrietia- seed and select their 

 strain. Moerheimi is an especial pet of my own, and w e 

 have one called Craven Gem, which has the great merit 



