258 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



pungent protests of bruised mint, filling the air for yards 

 with its fierce fragrance. Mentha Requien'ii hails from 

 Corsica, and so might well be rather tender. However, 

 after the hardest winter you are pretty sure, next 

 summer, to come on new patches and tracts of the little 

 Mint, smallest of its kind — smallest flowering plant in 

 cultivation. The last is a Novelty, — always to be men- 

 tioned with an Honorific capital, though it isn't a 

 bog-plant, and though I don't know its provenance, nor 

 the explanation of its jaw-breaking name. Helxtni 

 Soleiroli has only just come into cultivation, and bids fair 

 {Nertera, the fruiting Duckweed, so like a scarlet-berried 

 Lemna, being half-hardy, as also is Mitchella) to be the 

 most important carpeter in the garden, almost beating 

 Arenaria balearica out of the field. Helxine grows 

 as quick as a dream or a fungus — developing into a dense 

 sheet of verdure like a wee Ficus, with round leaves in 

 pairs. It grows with equal frenzy in good soil or none 

 at all, on bare rock or rich slope, in blazing sun or dense 

 shade. In summer it breaks out into blossom — into a 

 profusion of microscopic flowers that give the whole 

 plant the effect of being powdered with gold dust. As a 

 final recommendation, every shoot and fragment of the 

 plant will strike root and grow, no matter how small, no 

 matter where, nor how recklessly, inserted. Perhaps it is 

 not everywhere, nor invariably, to be trusted in winter, 

 but in all except very unfavourable corners I believe it 

 perfectly safe; and anyhow, one reserved pot will give 

 you a myriad new plants for next season. 



