MORE OF THE SMALLER BOG-PLANTS 245 



perfectly comfortable in the garden, if only you give it 

 a select corner in light peaty soil, in a position, for 

 precaution's sake, where spring winds and rains may not 

 too violently assault the delicate fabric of the flower. 

 SisyrincMwn striatum, to warn my readers, is totally 

 different ; in growth big and coarse, like a German Iris, 

 with crowded spikes of stupid little straw - coloured 

 blooms. This likes an ordinary dryish border — and doesn't 

 deserve it. Not unlike Sisyrinchium anceps, again, is 

 the Blue Rush of Provence. Aphyllanthes monspeliensls 

 is true to the name, forming a rushy tuft, indistinguishable 

 from a Juncus, and then erupting into big open cups of 

 soft clear blue. This delight, however, is not a bog- 

 plant. You will find it in the woods between Cannes 

 and Grasse ; in cultivation it likes a warm, sheltered 

 corner in rich sandy peat, where it grows more beautiful 

 every year. 



To return to our native bog-plants ; the Sundews, all 

 very much alike, and all, therefore, to be treated of under 

 Drosera rotundifolia, are pretty and interesting, though 

 not brilliant. Evil little things they are, with their 

 carnivorous habit. One wonders what crime the past 

 lives of Drosera can have held, that now the race should 

 be compelled to dree so ominous and unpleasant a weird 

 of murder and fraud. When will the Sundews be free of 

 the burden, through some self-sacrificing individual plant 

 who shall starve to death rather than take life, and so 

 redeem his race into the happier paths of peace and 

 virtue .'' Not to pursue such high inquiries beyond what 

 is fitting, I will merely add that the Sundews are not 

 hard to establish in wet moss, and that their flower-spikes 

 always promise much more than they perform, only one 

 or two blooms opening at a time on the uncurling 

 crozier, and never producing any fine unanimous effect of 

 blossom. The exotic Droseras, such as beautiful, rosy- 



