122 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



But this, alas ! is rather a miff, I don't know why. Others 

 may well be luckier than I ; but here I have never really 

 established either coerulea or serpyllifoMa, although I re- 

 member how at Kirkstall they grew about under bushes, 

 in dank ground, just like the commonest of cresses. 



Many Valerians are frequently advertised in flaming 

 terms. I have now bought most of them, in hopes to 

 find a pretty one ; but I never have. I think they are 

 invariably, big and little, rather coarse dowdy plants. 

 Arizonica was warmly recommended ; celtica had a senti- 

 mental interest ; rotundifoUa was described as attractive. 

 But they are every one of them disappointing, with a 

 good deal of leaf and then dull flattish mounds of very 

 poor pinky-purply flowers. No more Valerians for me, 

 then, please ! One species, dioica, I think, has httle whitish 

 flower-heads that cover all the wet places about here, 

 and iniquitously annoy me when I go questing for white 

 forms of Primula farinosa, perpetually luring me from 

 afar with their general suggestion of an Albino Primula, 

 and then when I have scrambled up or down the hill 

 after them, mocking me with their nasty anaemic Valerian- 

 faces. Almost every rare plant has a sort of protective 

 Double, I find, who deludes one, and embitters one's 

 search. When I ransacked the Devil's Kitchen above 

 Llyn Idwal for Lloydia serotina, there were innumerable 

 nameless little white things that kept putting me off and 

 setting my heart in a flutter ; in the high Alps one is 

 perpetually shinning up cliffs after EritncMum., only to 

 discover Myosotis rupicola, or darting after a white 

 Gentian, only to find some irritating Mountain Chrysan- 

 themum or Camomile. 



As for Scabious and Teasle, they do not give us very 

 much. When we get to them we are close under the 

 shadow of Compositae, and the curse of coarseness that 

 blights our largest race of flowering plants falls also on 



