MORE OF THE SMALLER BOG-PLANTS 251 



borne, of a gentle clear lavender in the type-form, with 

 featherings and splashings of purple in the basal segments. 

 In the variety hicolor, more advertised, though hardly 

 more beautiful, all the lower part of the flower is of a 

 dense, velvety, tyrian purple. But Viola pedata is a 

 perennial grief to the gardener. Its invariable habit is to 

 dwindle away. Truth to tell, it is only a mimp — though 

 the loveliest mimp imaginable. All you can do is to give 

 it very perfect, sharp drainage, in some very choice elevated 

 corner of the bog-garden, in very light, nutritious soil. 

 Even then there is no great hope of permanence. As a 

 consolation in misfortune, I may mention that Viola 

 pedata is one of the many plants that have undoubtedly 

 a strange unaccountable intractability even in their own 

 native country. In America, in the districts where it is 

 commonest, where it grows by the thousand in open sandy 

 places, gardeners who carefully transplant it to an exactly 

 similar place in their own gardens not a hundred yards 

 away find that it inevitably pines and dies in cultivation. 



For our bog-garden — for dank shady rocks in its 

 neighbourhood, rather — most desirable and most dainty, 

 is another Viola of very different temper, the little twin- 

 flowered, golden-yellow Violet that you find luxuriating 

 in damp, cool, stony places all Switzerland over, from the 

 depths of the pine forest, to the stony barrens near the 

 summit of the Gemmi. With shade of rock, rich, damp 

 soil, you cannot go wrong with Viola biflora, the gem and 

 pride of stony steps and hoUows in the garden, though 

 slugs and mice, I admit, annoy it as distractingly as its 

 big cousin calcarata. 



For wetter places of the bog you may perhaps use, 

 very cautiously, in out of the way corners, our natives, 

 Viola palustris and the rare stagnina variety of the 

 common Dog-Violet. Viola stagnina is a dwarf form of 

 camina, with large, creamy white flowers, and occurs 



