92 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



leaves, and sends up the most admirably floriferous stems 

 of bloom, carrying large, pure white flowers, in graceful 

 great loose umbels. It is a sound-hearted, thrifty, 

 good-natured plant, thriving almost anywhere, even in 

 more or less shade — a condition, I find, generally fatal 

 for Androsaces. (They say A. Laggeri will also do in 

 shade; well, it may ; but I have always found that every 

 single one of the genus prefers sun.) It is truly perennial, 

 too, and goes on blooming all the summer in a very 

 delightful, pleasant way. I am doing all I can for the 

 poor dear, after so frankly owning that I cannot pay it the 

 debt which I admit I owe. I respect it deeply ; love no 

 one can command, and Androsace lactea is too like the 

 dreadful little annuals and biennials for me ever to feel 

 quite fond of it. As for them, they too have neatness 

 and floriferousness. But, with one or two dazzling excep- 

 tions, such as Linaria alpina, and Gentiana nivalis — if any 

 one could ever get it to grow — I regard all annual plants 

 in the rock-garden as out of place. They are frauds there, 

 come in on false pretences. Your true alpine is a sturdy 

 soul, who battles with the vast elemental forces of life for 

 half a score of years ; — not a little, frivolous ephemera that 

 grows up in a month, and flowers and seeds and dies all 

 in a summer. So away, briefly, with Androsace filvformis, 

 coronopifolia, Chaixii, raddeana, septentrionalis, and their 

 synonyms. They are all pretty, mind you — some of them 

 very pretty indeed ; but I personally happen to have that 

 prejudice against annuals or confessed biennials — my 

 dazzling exceptions being only species that are too 

 cogently beautiful to be left out — Linaria alpina, lonop- 

 sidium acaule, Saxifraga Cymbalaria — (I don't say this is 

 cogently beautiful, or that I want it ; but it came, and 

 where Saxifraga Cymbalaria comes, it comes to stay). 

 Therefore 1 11 commend these annual Androsaces gener- 

 ously, but I won't grow them. 



