MORE OF THE SMALLER BOG-PLANTS 



by the sunset to a blazing amethyst. It had the size, 

 growth, and habit of dainty pedata, the same finely cleft 

 foliage ; its flower was large and stately, of a vivid 

 lavender. And there, amid the budding lilies and the 

 splashed gold and green of the vegetation that covered 

 the bare earth, the Violet glowed fierce in the red light. 

 And there, for all I know, it still glows. I cannot 

 obtain it. I get seed of all Japanese Violets I can hear 

 of, but not one of them ever turns out to be the Nikko 

 Violet of my heart — not even the most likely-sounding 

 ones, delphinifoUa, gryptoceras, Japonica. At least my 

 seed of gryptoceras never geminated at all, so that, by the 

 irony of life, I conclude that gryptoceras was very pro- 

 bably the Violet I wanted.'^ 



As for the two gorgeous new Violas, ^aciZi* and hetero- 

 phylla, these are of the wild pansy cousinhood, loving 

 high grassy mountain-sides. Fine-leaved gracilis hails 

 from Greece, and has the most intensely pm-ple flowers I 

 know anywhere. Heterophylla is only less brilliant, and 

 both thrive and multiply like bedding Pansies. And that 

 quaint, most rare of oddities, tufted, mat-like Viola arhor- 

 escens from Les Baumelles, is a cushion-violet, to be grown 

 on hot, rubbly banks, if you can get hold of it — which 

 you probably can't. 



I have been very happy and successful with a quaint- 

 ness for the Canadian Rockies, which I collected in wet 

 spongy places of the woodland bog, and now have grow- 

 ing and seeding all over the shady side of my rock-work, 

 swollen almost beyond recognition. Mitella pentandra 

 sends up a few palmate, handsome little leaves, and then, 

 in normal circumstances, a four-inch slender stem, carry- 



' No : at the very last moment before going to press, I have dis- 

 covered the Violet of my long quest. It is V. pinnata : variety, chaero- 

 phylloeides—xivsX, and probably conqueror, of all others. \i fedata is 

 Margaret of Angoulesme, surely pinnata must be Christine of Denmark 

 and Milan, 



