164 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



gems. They bloom early, too, before the other great 

 Lilies are showing bud. The remaining yellow Turk's 

 Caps are the true pomponium, a very vigorous grower of 

 medium stature, which has the rare demerit of a most 

 hateful stench ; and Hansom, a yellow counterpart of 

 Martagon itself, with which, though it is held an easy 

 species, I have seldom done much good. The enthusiast, 

 of course, will grow the rarer species, alike of the 

 Cup-shaped and the Turk's Cap sections — maritimum, 

 concolor, and dainty little starry Coridion. But 

 these, difficult and evanescent, need not trouble the 

 general gardener ; and as for the Big Cups, tall Bate- 

 manniae and thunbergianum, dwarf alutaceum, and 

 elegcms in a dozen forms, these are pretty and robust, 

 but fitted for the ordinary border. Of the other Turk's 

 Caps, the most valuable is chalcedonicum, with its better, 

 black-stemmed variety, excelswm, with flowers of dazzling 

 sealing-wax scarlet that appear in August and September. 

 But this loves warm, dryish places in the border, or among 

 light grass. 



Of ' fancy ' Lilies there is roseum, like a dull pink 

 Asphodel, and a blue-flowered species — a true lilium, and 

 truly blue, though only of a dull slaty shade, which has 

 recently been discovered in Korea. But of these the 

 first is rarely grown, and the second has never been 

 introduced. I shall not easily forget how I scoured a 

 high Korean down for it in early March. The short 

 grass was still sere and wintry ; here and there the steep 

 slopes were dotted with stunted bushes of Pinus koraiensis. 

 Beyond, clear blue against the sky, rose sharp sterile 

 peaks, and very far away below, to the utmost range of 

 the eye, extended, map-like, the ridged, gravelly desola- 

 tion of Korea. And on that Alpine pass the earliest sign 

 of life was a Lily pushing its first soft shoot of green 

 from the bulb. In the hope that it might prove the blue 



