254 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



ing perhaps half a dozen flowers. These flowers are 

 round, greenish, small, and quite dull until you look into 

 them. And then you see that the circular bloom is 

 deeply cut and fringed all round its edge, into the finest 

 delicate lace-work imaginable. There is nothing solid, 

 in fact, about the blossom, it is all a fringe to the central 

 mass where the organs live. In cultivation it thrives 

 profusely, grows more than a foot high, carries more 

 than a dozen flowers, makes a conspicuous solid tuft of 

 leaves, and sows itself copiously all over the place. Of 

 inconspicuous beauties this is the keenest and quaintest 

 that I know. More obvious than this is a valuable marsh- 

 plant, Calla palustris, a rampant, running miniature of 

 the common false Arum, Calla ethiopica. This riots about 

 over marsh and mud-flat, asking nothing but stern repres- 

 sion, and eating you out of house and home in no time. 



In dryer corners, under bigger things, you will, of 

 course, have a welcome for Sanguinaria canadensis, with 

 its round-lobed leaves, glaucous blue and bronze, and 

 its snowy flowers like Ranunculus anemonoeides, — or 

 perhaps it would be shorter to say 'like an Anemone' 

 straight out. This is never a nuisance and always a joy. 

 One only wishes it would increase quicker, so joyous are 

 its foliage and white stars in early summer, in cool places 

 or under deciduous trees. I have it in colonies, both 

 canadensis and its improved major form — under my 

 group of Magnolias, Kobus, Watsoni, stellata, and salici- 

 folia. Then there are the Poppyworts and Jeffersonias, 

 — coarse things, though brilliant, and reminiscent of the 

 ordinary common Chelidonium, trebled in size. More 

 beautiful is the rare Eomecon chionamtha, from mid- 

 China. But this exotic white Poppy for choice places, 

 rich and warm, is not of unquestioned hardiness, and I 

 have never been able to make a permanent success 

 of it. 



