THE BIG BOG AND ITS LILIES 167 



comes amiss. It will even thrive among potatoes. But it 



especially loves the cool, rich damps of the bog-garden 



a high leafy plant, whose one fault, in the typical form, 

 is that of sending up too many blind and flowerless 

 shoots. The flowers, however, if rare, are magnificent — 

 big, reflexed, spotted like the pard, on a ground of orange, 

 vermilion, and scarlet. In the other forms, too, of this 

 splendid Californian, the tendency to sparse-flowering is 

 corrected, and Bourgaei, Johnstoni, califomicum are all 

 varieties of the Panther-Lily which exceed the type, if 

 not in size, at all events in profuseness and brilliance. 

 And all these Lilies, once inserted in the bog, continue 

 thriving and increasing mightily from year to year, as if 

 they were the worst of weeds. Lilkrni superbum is 

 another North American, whose essential beauty is his 

 tall, swaying grace. He grows to ten feet or more when 

 fairly established in the bog, and carries a loose, airy 

 sheaf of medium-sized flowers, more or less reflexed, and 

 of the usual fiery colour. 



The Tiger Lily needs no description or advertisement. 

 This glory of autumn unfolds too late with me to give 

 any perfect pleasure, for how miserable and tantalising to 

 see fat, rosy buds all gnarled and browned with frost ! 

 And Lilium tigi-inum is not a bog plant. However, on 

 the heights of the bank the Tiger Lily with its trebled 

 forms, Fortunei and giganteum (but not its horrible 

 double variety), may well be placed in huge, bold clumps, 

 well above superbum, pardalimim, and the others that love 

 the damper levels. Among these perhaps my own especial 

 joy and pride is the rare and rather ill-reputed Grayi, 

 which I now have firmly and unquestionably established 

 in a sopping corner of the bog, where it yearly doubles 

 the number of its spikes. Grayi is a little, slender lily, 

 carrying a loose spire of rather small bell-shaped flowers, 

 pendulous, of orange and crimson. Like all the Panther- 



