SOME NEW ALPINES FOR GARDEN USE 
STEPHEN F. HAMBLIN 
Director of the Botanic Garden of Harvard University 
Introducing a Small Group of Low-growing Plants of Proven Hardiness 
Editors’ Note: This is the third contribution in a series of notes briefly introducing our readers to new herbaceous plants. Among flower novelties many 
may prove mediocre, and a few superlatively good; but all have the allure of the unknown quantity, and one of gardening’s chiefest thrills lies in testing out the 
stranger-at-the-gate for permanent admittance or rejection. Much preliminary sifting has already been done for us by Mr. Hamblin, so that only the selected best 
comes to notice in his notes, and thus our readers get the benefit of appraisal by a disinterested critic and friend of plants. 
All who try out new garden flowers are asked to send in estimates of their values in the garden and experiences in their culture, giving some history of their 
introduction and advising the Editors of present source of supply. Thus we shall have a clearing-house of information and publicity that will widely increase the use 
of really desirable plants. If some do not come up to advertised virtues, let us frankly state their failings. 
|ANY of the new herbs from the mountains of foreign 
lands are probably not suited for general use in our 
usual gardens, and, since real rock gardens are not 
yet common, it will be some time before the newest 
alpines offered abroad are common in cultivation here. Some 
are doubtless not easy to grow, or require more care than we are 
willing to give them. They are apparently hardy so far as cold 
is concerned, for the experiment in unheated greenhouses at 
the Harvard Botanic Garden with more than 400 species shows 
that they survive the winter with no heat at all, the beds 
being frozen solid and thawing out in early March. 
Of the many new alpines, scarcely offered in this country, 
even as seed, some have a future with us in general use. From 
the beds of the greenhouses of the Harvard Botanic Garden, 1 
have specially marked a dozen or more for other uses besides 
that of a rock garden. They must be hardy, easy of cultivation, 
and showy in flower, with virtues like our friend Campanula 
carpatica, which is surely more than a rock garden plant. 
M ANY new low Campanulas there are, confusing to study, 
and to them we may recur later. Of the new groups of 
the Campanula family the genus Codonopsis from Central Asia 
(5 or more species) promises to be very valuable. The best- 
known species is Codonopsis ovata, a slender trailing plant, 
a foot or so tall. The nodding purple-blue bells look like a large 
Scotch Bluebell, but the leaves are broad and numerous. The 
roots are like a small Platycodon, and apparently are frost hardy. 
Easily grown from seed. It will be a good border perennial for 
the front of the bed. C. convolvulacea, which I have 
not seen, has twining stems and the flowers look like 
a blue Clematis or a baby Platycodon. Can any 
one report on it? 
From the Alps and from Tasmania come 
the dozen or less species of Wahlenbergia, 
the baby cousins of Platycodon. IVahlen- 
bergia dalmatica, the commonest species, 
is woody at the base, with grass-like 
leaves. No one would suspect that it 
was a Bellflower until the tubular pur¬ 
ple bells, an inch long in erect racemes, 
appear in June. It is perfectly hardy, 
prefers peat, moisture and half-shade, 
and should be useful in the hardy border; 
about six inches high. The names in this 
group are apparently much confused, for 
W. graminifolia and IV. tenuifolia are the 
same or very similar. 
IV. saxicola is trailing in habit, has obovate 
leaves, the stems wholly deciduous like Cam¬ 
panula carpatica. The flowers are white. 
Though from Tasmania, and given as annual 
in the “StandardCyclopedia of Horticulture,” 
it seems wholly perennial and frost hardy. 
Pratia angulata, from New Zealand, forms 
little carpets of rounded, toothed foliage not 
The tiny white 
THIBET POPPY 
more than three inches high 
Growing in Louise Beebe Wilder’s garden 
at Bronxville (N.Y.) which shelters some¬ 
thing over 600 species of rock plants whose 
history and habits will be described in 
Mrs. Wilder’s fascinating forthcoming 
book “Adventures In My Rock Garden.’’ 
(See page 310, July G. M., for Mr. Hamb¬ 
lin’s notes on this “Papaver from Thibet”) 
364 
flowers, purple marked, are like a bedding Lobelia. Later there 
are beautiful purple berries wherein lies the chief difference from 
the genus Lobelia. It appears to be hardy, and if it were a 
little more showy it would solve the problem of a hardy edg¬ 
ing for borders and formal gardens, taking the place of annual 
Lobelia Erinus or Sweet Alyssum. 
OVERS of our native plants who know the ways of our 
^ Virginia Lungwort (Mertensia virginica) will find the tiny 
Mertensia ecbioides from the Himalayas a real gem. It is only 
six inches high, the leaves soft hairy, the flowers deep blue in 
very dense racemes. Of course it goes to sleep after blooming, as 
Mertensias do, but it appears to be suited for wild planting 
along with our native species. 
M OST species of Lychnis, as garden plants, are weedy or 
short-lived, scarcely suited to the permanent border, 
though showy in flowers. A new alpine, L. Lagascae, from the 
Pyrenees, has more the appearance of a Silene (see Petrocoptis 
in Bailey’s “Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture”), for the 
petals are not cut in a notch. It forms mats of narrow ever¬ 
green foliage some nine inches high, little bushes, with rosy 
scarlet flowers through May and June. The var. rosea is rose 
pink. Surely this will be a very valuable edging plant. L. 
pyrenaica, of similar habit, the flowers white, is offered also. 
Gypsophila cerastioides, from the Himalayas, is no Baby’s- 
breath. It is a woody, creeping evergreen with small, broad, 
tufted leaves. The flowers are axillary, a quarter-inch across, 
white with a purple tinge on the petals. May. It is 
very hardy and showy and can be used like the 
dwarf species of Phlox. 
N EW ZEALAND BUR (Acaena) is a 
queer thing. Acaena inermis is a 
creeping tiny evergreen shrub, the leaves 
pinnate like a Geum (Rose family) or a 
minute Potentilla. No flowers have 
appeared, and the beauty of the plant 
is in its tiny compound leaves. It will 
make a fine carpet in narrow places, es¬ 
pecially where very dry. 11 ought to be 
excellent between the stohes in a step¬ 
ping-stone walk. A.microphylla is merely 
smaller still, the leaves tinged purple; A. 
Buchanani is more blue-green in color. 
The deep gentian-blue Gromwell, Lithos- 
permum prostratum, is deservedly popular as a 
low trailer. Quite different is L. intermedium, 
said to be a hybrid, a lowwoody shrub some 8- 
10 inches high. The narrow evergreen leaves 
are whitened below, like a small loose plant of 
Lavender. The light blue flowers, in short ax¬ 
illary racemes, appear in July, wonderful in 
color, but the loose habit of the plant makes 
it unsuited to the border. Try it in the dry 
wall, and it is more hardy than Lavender. 
