100 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



silence. But no ; this will not do. I must be honest, 

 and confess before the world that Polygala Chamaebuxus 

 does not seem to requite my affection. I swear I love her 

 wholeheartedly, the little creeping Box that one finds on 

 the lower Alp, with butterfly-shaped flowers of cream and 

 yellow and white and orange (so curiously recalling the 

 colours of a poached egg, a la Portugaise). Rhodoptera is 

 a crimson-winged form, and Vayredae a delightful near 

 relation ; but the whole family has no love for me. 

 And this is the more humiliating because these Milkworts 

 are usually the easiest of plants to grow, thriving where 

 they are happy, like so much Couch-grass. But, if the 

 truth must out, it takes a great deal of trouble in this 

 garden to make any of the peat-zone Alpines really com- 

 fortable ; so that, after much sorrow and expense, I have 

 almost accepted my refusal at the hands of Polygala 

 Chamaebuxus, and betaken myself to other kindlier 

 loves. 



Of the Flaxes, any one and every one grows the noble 

 big yellow ones, Lhium jlavum and Linum arboreum, 

 neither of which is perfectly, safely hardy, though, even 

 here, they are seldom if ever really injured by the winter. 

 But the rock-garden possesses two most delightful dwarf 

 Flaxes in Linum alpinum and Linum salsoloeides. Linum 

 alpinvm is like a dwarf almost trailing version of the 

 ordinary Flax, with lovely soft blue flowers. It thrives 

 in any open position, and the wonder is that people do 

 not make more use of it. The other rock-garden species 

 is even less common ; Linum salsoloeides haunts the 

 Maritime Alps— I have collected him above St. Martin 

 Vesubie on hot sunny banks below the Alpine region. 

 He is almost prostrate — in a very rare form, of which I 

 only have one plant, he is quite so — making a few 

 wiry branches, furry with narrow green leaves, like a 

 miniature pine-twig. The flowers are large, ice-cold 



