THE GREATER BOG-PLANTS 181 



not the free habit, and certainly not the rare startling 

 beauty that distinguishes Senecio Doronicum. 



No ; having climbed high in a moment on to the 

 beloved Alps of my heart's eternal longing, I will Tiot come 

 lumbering down again immediately to the levels of my 

 bog-garden five or six thousand feet below in the stuffy, 

 wooded valley. It is too far to go for only one tantalis- 

 ing minute ; now that I am here I will stay a while and 

 drink deep breaths of the mountains, and wander round 

 among the lesser cousins of the Groundsels. Every one 

 knows the big leafy yellow Leopard's Banes of every 

 cottage garden, carrying abundant coarse Dandelion 

 flowers in early spring, on tall stems of two or three feet. 

 These one may grow in rough worthless corners, and both 

 plantagineivni and pardalianches are so vigorous that they 

 have established themselves as wildlings in several English 

 woods. Orphanidesi I reared from seed, and had high 

 hopes of, because only one seed ever germinated. How- 

 ever that, in the changes and chances of the potting- 

 shed, vanished mysteriously, and was no more seen. So 

 I have little to say of Doronicum. But the high Alps 

 give us some cousins of the Doronicums that are almost 

 their twins. The Aronicums, of which glaciale and scor- 

 pioeides are to my eyes barely distinguishable, only come 

 into view when you are leaving even Senecio Doronicum 

 behind, and are well up on the desolate territory of the 

 moraines. Here the broad, ephemeral leaves of the 

 Aronicums begin to peer at you from stony slopes and 

 the shadow of dank wet rocks. They look far too flop- 

 ping, thin-textured and brilliant in their shallow green to 

 be growing here in this desolation, amid these rigorous 

 stern conditions, hardly a hundred feet from Eritrichium 

 nanum, and within bowing distance of the glacial Ranun- 

 culus. Yet here these plebeian-looking creatures flourish, 

 and here they send up occasionally, on short leafy stems, 



