THE GREATER BOG-PLANTS 177 



existence, of Spiraea digitata. For, horticulturally de- 

 scribed, it is simply a minute dwarfed form of Spiraea 

 pahnata — a tiny brilliant version of a big brilliant 

 original which does not, or should not, exceed three or 

 four inches in height, although the spreading plume of 

 its blossom is no less large and no less rosy than that 

 which crowns the leafy three-foot stem of palmata itself. 

 ' Should not,' say I, though, in my uncertainty. For 

 digitata is suspiciously liable to variation, and though I 

 have many plants that remain perfectly true, trusty and 

 tiny from year to year, producing tinies too from seed, 

 yet again I have had Digitatas that waxed fat and kicked 

 like Jeshurun, and swelled into ordinary stunted speci- 

 mens of palmata. This leaves me doubtful whether 

 digitata, permanent and perennial though its habit may 

 generally be, is not perhaps a local, possibly an Alpine 

 variety of palmata, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a 

 hundred, remains distinct, but not in the hundredth that 

 constitutes a true species. In any case digitata is one of 

 the loveliest things on the rock-work, and delights one 

 even further by bearing its wide rosy flower-heads all 

 through summer and autumn, far on into the dark days 

 of early winter, when there is nothing left but the mud- 

 flecked, slug-nibbled cups of Cokhicum, repellent in their 

 acrid and poisonous-looking magenta. Spiraea digitata, 

 always remaining a dwarf, restricts itself permanently to 

 a single crown, never runs about nor grows weedy, but 

 illumines its select corner from year to year with its crest 

 of rosy foam, and makes seed in just sufficient quantity to 

 give you always a few babies, though never as many as 

 you would like to have of so willing, persistent, and 

 beautiful a fairy. 



A little while ago I mentioned Senecio clivorum. To 

 Senecio clivorum I now return. Senecios they are called 

 by botanists, ' but liberal gardeners give a grosser name.' 



M 



