COMPOSITAE 127 



enough even for the higher wilder banks. I imported 

 sericea with a great deal of excitement one year from the 

 East, but it turned out a huge, silky-leaved, golden- 

 flowered edition of the common Yarrow. But of Achillea 

 the name is legion ; learned catalogues are swelled out 

 with columns of them. I have no inclination to specialise 

 on this race, and I am sceptical as to the beauty or dis- 

 tinctness of many of those recorded — however an Achillea- 

 enthusiast, if any such there be, must go bravely on 

 experimenting, in hopes to acquire unsuspected loveliness. 

 So far as I know, all the Yarrows are easy to grow, 

 though perhaps the glacial sorts may give trouble. 



Close to Achillea, and only a little more attractive, are 

 the Alpine Camomiles. Anthemis aeizoon, I must heartily 

 acknowledge, is a very beautiful plant indeed, with 

 rosettes of silver-white-pinnate leaves, and abundance of 

 pure, snowy Marguerites, large and brilliant. Biebersteini 

 is an Oriental, rather coarser, with big yellow flowers, 

 that everybody else seems to admire a great deal more 

 than I can. This race, again, looms large in catalogues ; 

 but I have never found an Anthemis to beat aeizoon, so 

 perfectly easy and hardy that it is a pleasure to sit and 

 look at its silver cushions. Pyrethrum is a race more 

 famous in borders than in the rock-garden, but I have 

 (or had, for the winter seems to have killed it), a Pyre- 

 thrum densum, neat and pretty, with lovely silver-woolly- 

 pinnate leaves and dull yellow flowers ; while Pyrethrum 

 transylvanicum is so new here that I can only commend 

 its beautiful white foliage and pretty habit. Chamaemelon 

 caucasicum is a ferny-leaved trailing little cousin of the 

 Camomiles, with white Camomile flowers, not by any 

 means particularly attractive or remarkable. Chrysogonum 

 virgimanuvi is a very free-growing dwarf plant, with 

 abundance of golden yellow flowers, which I have never 

 been able to help thinking rather mean in colour and 



