OF ODD TREASURES 133 



the rock-garden. We may also include Sedum dasy- 

 phyllum, and Sedum brevifolium, a really beautiful tiny 

 species, with fat blue foliage. (Pottsi is the name under 

 which I had this, but \vhat Pottsi may mean, or who 

 Potts is — unless he is the unique gentleman who said he 

 admired Johnson's Irene, — I liave no notion.) 



Equally pretty are my Sedum lydium and my .S". Ewersl 

 turkestanlcum, this last rather larger, prostrate, with 

 ovate, variegated leaves and pretty pink heads. Cor- 

 sicuni is neat, and supposed to be a form of dasyphyllum, 

 and farinosum a form of album. Rhodanthum and 

 aeizoon I am growing on from seed. But the larger 

 Stonecrops lack individuality in my mind — they are 

 furniture rather than inhabitants of the garden. 



Of the larger Sedums Ingleborough provides me with 

 Sedum Rhodiola, the herbaceous Rose-root, with stout 

 woody root-stock, and stiff stems of glaucous leafage and 

 dull yellow flowers. The name comes from the scent of 

 the root, which, in the wild plants, is like that of an old 

 Damask rose. Sedum spurium, a prostrate mass, with 

 broad heads of white and pink, ramps in every cottage- 

 garden ; Sedum Jcamschaticum, with a variegated form, is 

 virtually an orange-coloured spurium ; Sedum Telephium, 

 with tall, dingy crimson heads, is a useful, uninteresting- 

 native ; Sedum spectahile, with its enormous blue leaves 

 and ample cauliflowers of rosy blossom in late autumn is 

 equally familiar. It is a splendid thing, beloved of bees 

 and butterflies, though its colour has a chalky tone that 

 makes it perfectly ghastly anywhere within a mile of any 

 good crimson, scarlet, or yellow. Sedum scxangulare and 

 Sedum rupestre are natives, the first common, and the 

 second extremely rare, but not easily distinguishable from 

 each other ; both thrive on any wall, and have heads of 

 golden flowers which, in the similar Sedum pulchellum, are 

 of a soft pink. Unfortunately Sedum pulchellum, otherwise 



