BETWEEN DIANTHUS AND EPILOBIUM 109 



unfortunately it is a little delicate, and very much objects 

 to damp. Also it is exceedingly difficult to procure ; its 

 range is limited ; roots are not easy to come by ; and as 

 for seed, the cattle browse so effectively over the high 

 Alpine pastures where it grows, that very rarely after 

 flowering-time can you find a sign of the plant itself, to 

 say nothing of its seed-pods. No wonder it remains a 

 rare plant of rigidly limited distribution. Perhaps the 

 best of all, though, for the rock-work, is the new lovely 

 hybrid, Cytisus kewensis, forming broad almost prostrate 

 masses of long thin sprays, with pendulous cream-coloured 

 flowers, large and beautiful. This is perfectly easy, hardy, 

 and persistent, to be increased by cuttings ; a picture of 

 loveliness in its time. Procumbens and brflorus (biflorus, I 

 fancy, is one parent of kewensis ; and Ardoini may be the 

 other) are rarities of kindred habit, bearing much the 

 same cream-coloured blossoms, and having much the same 

 creeping habit, though less vigorous, perhaps. Decumbens 

 has golden flowers, and its synonym is Genista prostrata. 

 Schipkaensis is a charming dwarf shrub with white flowers. 

 Of the greater Brooms, there is the dull lilac-pink New- 

 Zealander, Notospartium Carmichaeliae, for a warm corner, 

 and then CytisiLS praecox^the white-flowered, and Spartium 

 junceum are invaluable for bold work. And all these — 

 C3rtisus, Genista, Spartium — are of the easiest culture, 

 though Cytisus Ardoini and his rocky kindred deserve, of 

 course, more attention than the big rampers. A weird 

 and curious beauty, though, of whom the same cannot be 

 said, is Erinacea pungens ; truly may this be called a 

 hedgehog ! It makes a microscopic bush, like a Broom 

 dwarfed by a Japanese. Then, on the long, inexorable 

 bare spines that make its boughs, there break a few 

 apologetic-looking little leaves, and after these the large, 

 deep-blue flowers. Erinacea is a Spaniard, and requires 

 heat and drought, and rough well-drained soil, if it is to 



