BETWEEN DIANTHUS AND EPILOBIUM 101 



white, with darker veining and a purple eye — delicate 

 as Nierembergia frutescens and entrancing as Geranium 

 lancastrieme. 



The one thing that Linum salsoloeides needs is ex- 

 posure ; the one thing he cannot and will not put up 

 with is excessive damp. Give him a high, hot crevice, 

 and I dare warrant you will have no more trouble with 

 him, but increasing pleasure from year to year. He is 

 not a difficult plant, but dislikes any neglect of his own 

 pet fads : ' Don't try no impogician with him, for he will 

 not abear it.' 



Other Flaxes that come in very handy are the tall, 

 bushy, blue-flowered Linnm sibiricum, with its white form 

 — often sent out in plants or seeds for the rarer alpinum, 

 so be careful — a perennial version of the commercial 

 Flax; and Linum viscosum, another south-European, 

 growing about a foot high, with large, soft, pink flowers. 

 These are quite comfortable to deal with, though viscosum 

 must be planted where moisture in winter cannot annoy 

 him. He is a compatriot of salsoloeides, which is hard 

 on him, I feel. For salsoloeides has so pure an elegance 

 of charm, that the stout leafy boughs of viscosum and 

 its big mauve flowers seem, in comparison, blowzy and 

 commonplace. 



The St. John's Worts are a large and showy race ; 

 and the more ordinary sorts are so well known and so 

 much grown that I need not mention them, except to 

 suppose that no rock-gardener will have the unhappy 

 notion of bringing Hypericum calycinum anywhere near 

 the rock-garden. A worse weed, and a handsomer, was 

 never known. The taller species, moserianum, patulum, 

 nepalense,aureum,Ascyron,Androsaem.um, are all valuable 

 for backgi'ounds, but of plants for the rock-work itself 

 the order gives us a few really valuable ones. Hypericum 

 olympicum is sometimes very beautiful. It is a frail- 



