322 
THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GDIDE. 
texture, and many of the alpine trees resemble herbaceous plants in 
some of the more prominent of their characteristics. 
The Alpine E,ose is the Rhododendron chamoecistus, of which a 
life-like portrait is herewith presented. It grows from four to six 
inches high, branches freely, and is densely clothed with small 
leaves of thick texture, which are of a lively green in early summer, 
and acquire delicate hues of red and bronze in the later days of 
summer, the season of the plant being short, like the season of its 
native Tyrolean hills. The flowering of this plant is always an 
event for the earnest cultivator of alpines, for although it flowers on 
the mountains as freely as the pretty ling does on our gritstone 
moors, it is shy to flower when under cultivation. Those who have 
seen it “ at home,” densely dotted with its delicious Kalmia-like 
flowers, would barely recognize it in the rock garden, where it is 
usually seen in an attenuated state of growth, producing but few 
flowers or none at all. 
The alpine rose is not a difficult plant to manage, if we begin 
with it in the right way. Those who are familiar with the acres of 
double flowering heaths that may be found on the chalk downs 
above Findon Pass, and around the conspicuous ring of Chancton- 
bury, in Sussex, will not be startled when we tell them that this 
rhododendron requires a limestone soil, and is really found growing 
wild, with its roots deep seated in crevices of calcareous rocks. It 
is generally understood that calcareous matters are poisonous to 
ericaceous plants, and to a very great extent this is true. But 
there are exceptions, and just as the lovely double and pink and 
blush and white varieties of Calluna vulgaris and Erica tefralix grow 
luxuriantly on the chalk downs of south Sussex, so, on its native 
hills, Ehododendron chamsecistus usually attains its flnest form 
when rooted deep in the limestone. 
There are two other so-called alpine roses, namely. Rhododendron 
hirsutum and R. ferrugmeum, which are of more robust habit than 
the alpine rose proper, but agree with it in loving limestone. And 
it would be no violation of bad taste in this connection, to think of 
the “Rock Rose,” Helianihemum vulgare, for that loves the soil 
and aspect that suit our pretty little rhododendron. It may be that 
some of our readers have never seen the rock rose growing wild, 
but they may easily do so when its season returns. In Bonsai Dale, 
one of the loveliest of many lovely dales in northern Derby, and in 
the dales that open out therefrom, may be seen miles of the 
helianthemum in the month of July, the flowers surpassing the 
finest of buttercups in beauty, and the plant making the close, 
dense, tufted, and refined growth peculiar to the race we call 
“alpines.” Here it thrives on the mountain limestone, keeping 
company with the lily of the valley, of which there is any quantity 
in this dale of dales, which has for its principal ornament a waterfall 
not so wide as a man could stretch with his arms, that falls as 
straight as a tightened cord for 200 feet, and is as cold and pure as 
newly melted mountain snow. 
For this class of plants — for, indeed, all the alpine shrubs — a 
rockery should be formed of large blocks of limestone, put together 
