246 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



flowered Jiliformis, are too frail and delicate to prosper 

 long in the rough and tumble of the garden. 



Sedum villosum I have already mentioned. This is 

 a dear pretty little creature, which nobody seems to 

 know or to grow. It is, I expect, of biennial tendency, 

 but seeds happily, and is charming for damp soil or 

 rock in the bog-garden, a frail wee grower, making 

 one or two spikes of fat little leaves, about two or 

 three inches high, crowned, in June, with big Catherine- 

 wheel flowers of a soft waxy pale pink. The common 

 Grass of Parnassus every one knows, on the contrary. 

 Does every one grow it .'' I, for my part, have always 

 found it less easy and more capricious than its much 

 more beautiful brother, Parnassia fiimbriata, which I 

 collected years ago in the Rockies. This, though it 

 thrives most robustly in rich damp soil, is able to thrive 

 robustly almost everywhere ; a better-tempered plant was 

 never imported. It has taller stems than palustris, a 

 much freer habit, larger, crowded clumps, and larger 

 white flowers, with the eponymous fringe of fine white 

 hairs between each petal at their base. The other 

 Parnassias are almost identical with fimbriata and palus- 

 tris, and therefore less worthy of culture than the supreme 

 fimbriata ; there is one, however, nubicola, I think, or 

 perhaps caroliniana, which aflPects yellow or a yellowish 

 shade for its flowers. This I have grown, failed with, 

 and forgotten. I cannot have had much pleasure 

 from it. 



Of ferns and grasses our own woods and fells give us 

 one or two valuable plants for the bog. Near by must 

 be the Beech-fern, on a high bank of light, rich, rotten 

 soil. And infinitely more beautiful than Polypodivm 

 phegopteris, with the rather arid dusty green of its fronds, 

 Polypodium dryopteris must certainly claim our worship. 

 Than the rich brilliant emerald of the Oak-fern's fronds, 



