BETWEEN DIANTHUS AND EPILOBIUM 115 



Orobus varius. These are both plants of imperturbable 

 vigour and hardiness, growing persistently, thriftily on, 

 in any decent position, even in the open border. Hirsutus 

 forms a prostrate flopping mass of foliage, covered all 

 through the summer with a profusion of single wine- 

 coloured and purple flowers, like big violets. Varius, 

 erect, slender, graceful, grows about a foot high, has 

 fine delicate leaves and loose spikes of the loveliest 

 blossoms, clear-white and salmon-rose, that appear in 

 early summer. 



The Potentillas are beloved by many, but not by me. 

 In fact, I can muster no love for any Potentilla over six 

 inches high. Hippiana, pulcherrirna, argjjropliylla, and 

 the rest have all been tried, conscientiously admired, and 

 secretly disliked. Brilliant as they may be, to me they 

 seem coarse and leafy. However, I hope better things 

 from fulgens, which has just been given me with high 

 recommendations. And splendens is small and pretty — a 

 silver strawberry. These Potentillas have such marvellous 

 names, all of them — pulcherrirna, formosa, argentea, 

 chrysocraspeda, crinita — you expect something after 

 that ; puhherrima ought to be at least pretty. And no 

 authoritative work ever describes these people either, so 

 that when one is working over a catalogue, one has to 

 go by these awe-inspiring adjectives, and order the plants 

 they belong to, in the hope that they may not be liars, 

 these sonorous epithets. But they generally are. Poten- 

 tilla nitida, however, is certainly a jewel — I seize the 

 opportunity of repeating its praises — well worthy of its 

 comparatively modest but truthful name. Other beauties 

 are the natives verna and alpestris, the double form of 

 that awful weed, reptans, the silvery Valderia, and a name- 

 less little white ramper I collected in the Rockies. Other- 

 wise the long lists of names that swell out Potentilla in 

 catalogues are too apt to be tall or dowdy plants. The 



