SHRUBBY SUB-SHRUBBY ELOPERS. 107 



Ease, there are numerous other species, some of which 

 are lively ornaments to a rock-work or the top of a wall, 

 or will brighten up the barrenness of a sandy waste. 



Water Lily — Nymphma alba, the White, and Nupliar 

 luteum, the Yellow ; the former much the handsomest. — 

 Useful in ponds with a muddy bottom,, where gold-fish, 

 fresh- water tortoises, &c, are kept. Procure a good 

 large stout rhizoma at the end of summer, and sink it in 

 its place by a stone tied to it. The Yellow Water Lily 

 is apt to increase to a troublesome extent ; so beware 

 how you introduce it to your artificial lake. There are 

 Chinese Water Lilies, red and blue, whose winters at 

 home are severer than with us, and yet they cannot get 

 through ours. It is the defective summer heat which 

 renders them thus tender. 



Willow Herb. — A large genus, many of whose species, 

 with gay red flowers, grow wild in moist spots. The 

 French Willow Herb, E. spicatum, is a tall perennial, 

 useful for screens and shrubbery-skirts, with purplish- 

 red flowers and blue anthers. Hardy ; increases so fast 

 at root as to become a nuisance, if you let it. 



SHRUBBY A> T D SUB-SHRUBBY FLOWERS. 



There is so gradual a transition from herbs to shrubs, 

 and from shrubs to trees, that the terms " sub- shrubby 

 plants" and " suffruticose trees" have been invented, 

 to designate those individuals which occupy intermediate 

 positions in the long series of the vegetable kingdom. If, 

 therefore, the reader should feel inclined to cavil at 

 the Wallflower's being included amongst the Shrubby 

 Flowers, that climbers like the Clematis and the Passion- 

 flower are made to enter into the same list, or that the 

 Arbutus and the Elder rank with Flowering Trees in the 

 present volume, — he will kindly remember that there is 

 no room here to discuss nice botanical distinctions, but 

 simply to pass in compact review the most desirable 

 occupants of a flower-garden. 



Althcea frutex, or Hibiscus Syriacus, often called 



