OF ODD TREASURES 137 



plants in every way — neat and thrifty and brilliant — 

 cousins of the pallid Thrifts though they be. Probably 

 the old glumaceum remains the best — making mats of 

 spiny cushions in any decent, hot place, and then sending 

 up spikes of bright rosy blossoms, like very large thrift- 

 flowers, each arranged singly, in a chaffy bract. My 

 other species, venustitm and androsaceum, are much rarer 

 in gardens, and even more beautiful, though slower in 

 growth, and, perhaps, a little choicer in requii-eraents. 

 The leaves of venustum are glaucous grey, and the flowers 

 are much bigger than those ot glumaceum, and of a lovely 

 bright pink ; the flowers of androsaceum have more 

 purple. All the Acaniholimons hail from hot ranges like 

 Lebanon, and in cultivation like a sunny-corner, light 

 soil, and a high, well-drained position ; in which cir- 

 cumstances they show themselves pleasantly hardy and 

 accommodating. 



Two other sun-lovers with whom, on the contrary, I 

 have had a good deal of bother, are those two glorified 

 Portulacas, Lewisia rediviva and Lewisia Tweedyi. These 

 are both Americans, and want sun and drought and 

 drainage, so that I might have expected difficulty with 

 them. However, rediviva has done very fairly well, 

 with its odd habit — a reminiscence of the deadly desert- 

 summer, I suppose — of dying off' most wretchedly into a 

 withered mass, and then (just when you are on the point 

 of throwing away the corpse in disgust) of breaking quite 

 happily again, with a quantity of rosy Mesembryan- 

 themum-like flowers. Lewisia Tweedyi is very much more 

 beautiful, however, with leafy rosettes, that look like 

 some succulent evening Primrose, and then, on stems 

 about four or five inches high, large flowers of an iri- 

 descent creamy-pink, such as you see in certain Tea 

 Roses. In the open this plant has been an utter failure 

 here — any touch of undue damp seeming to rot its stout 



