166 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



Martagon — which haunts the dense gloom of pine-forests all 

 over far Eastern Asia, from the wooded uplands of China 

 to Saghalin and the dank darkness of the jungle in Hok- 

 kaido. The stolid, cone-like, scaleless bulbs send out many 

 whip-thong roots that are gluttonous for food. Up come 

 broad heart-shaped leaves, iridescent, glossy-green. Then, 

 after years, a spike, tallest in giganteum, which reaches to 

 twelve or fifteen feet, carrying ten to twenty long, narrow, 

 white trumpets, very fragrant, white within, and purplish 

 white on the exterior. The plant matures abundant 

 seed, throws many offsets, and dies after flowering. 

 Giganteum is the only one that need be grown, the 

 others being smaller, inferior editions. This Lily is 

 grateful for shade, moisture, and shelter, towering magni- 

 ficently in sheltered, cool corners of the woodland, among 

 ferns, but not requiring the copse-protection that the 

 naked-stemmed lilies of the Archeleirion section prefer. 

 Indeed, the big heart-shaped leaves of giganteum admit 

 of no such overshadowing. The only other note to offer 

 on this Lily is that it has the most hoggish appetite of 

 any plant I know. If you want a first-rate colony of 

 it on the crest of your bank above the bog, you will 

 do well to excavate a pit and fill it with the contents 

 of half a dozen swill-troughs and hog-pens ; then stamp 

 down rich light soil, and plant the lily-bulbs in it. It 

 is perfectly robust and hardy, too, though it sometimes 

 suffers from cold rains or melting frosts lodging in the 

 goblet of the glittering leaves as they first unfold from 

 the bulb. 



Passing over now, as a rock-plant, my own especial 

 favourite, delicious ruhellum, we come to the lower slopes 

 of my bank, and the great lilies that are definitely and 

 frankly bog- plants, clamouring for incessant and abun- 

 dant moisture. Lilium pardaliniim, is a tall, rampant 

 grower, perennially vigorous, to whom no treatment 



