at se a THE ENGLISH ROCK-GARDEN THE ENGLISH ROCK-GARDEN BY REGINALD FARRER VOL, LONDON:: T. Ca & EE. Cy JACK--LTD. 35 PATERNOSTER ROW, EC. AND EDINBURGH 1919 LIST OF PLATES. PLATE PAGE PLATE PAGE 1, OMPHALODES LUOGILIAE , > - 8 | 20. Primuna Rerpii. ° e e - 176 2. OXALIS ENNEAPHYLLA 5 a - 24 PrimMvtaA REINII. - e e . 76 PARONYOHIA ARGENTEA , : . 24 | 21. PRIMULA ROSEA . 5 Fy 5 - 180 40 3. PAPAVER TRINIAEFOLIUM . ° ° PRIMULA ROTUNDIFOLIA . - - 180 PETROCALLIS PYRENAICA , . 40 ] 22. Primuta Purpomim . As : ABA 4, PENTSTEMON COERULEUS . : . 48 PRIMULA SERRATIFOLIA , : . 184 PENTSTEMON NEWBERRY! . : . 48 | 23. PRIMULA SAXATILIS . - 5 - 188 5. PHLOX SUBULATA (var. ‘‘NIVALIS”), 68 PRIMULA SUFFRUTESCENS . é . 188 PHYTEUMA COMOSUM . : . 68 | 24, PRIMULA SIKKIMENSIS - “ ~ 492 6. PHyYTEUMA SIEBERI . : : oe te PRIMULA UNIFLORA . : : . 192 POLYGONUM VACOINIFOLIUM A « 72 | 25. Prrmv~a VIOLA-GRANDIS . A - 196 7. POTENTILLA ALPESTRIS : = . 88 PRIMULA VINOAEFLORA - : - 196 PRIMULA CONOINNA . : - . 88 | 26. PRIMULA URTICIFOLIA - - - 200 8. Primuta BEESIANA . : - = IZ PRIMULA VITTATA - F ° . 200 PRIMULA OITRINA - - - - 112 | 27. Primvuna viscosa - = - 204 9, PRIMULA CONSPERSA . - - - 120 PRIMULA WINTERI , : = . 204 PRIMULA DEALBATA , 5 e - 120 | 28. Primuna Warti1 : : . . 208 10. PRIMULA x DISCOLOR [form] . . 124 RAMONDIA PYRENAICA , , . 208 PRIMULA FRONDOSA . . =. =~ +124 | 99. RaNuNOULUS ACONITIFOLIUS . . 212 11, Primuca FaRRERIANA =... (128 RANUNOULUS GLACIALIS «we 212 PRIMULA GEMMIFERA. . . ~~ 128 | 39 Ranunounus THORA. . . . 216 12. PRIMULA GLAUCESCENS : . SaloG RODGERSIA YABULARIA as : _ 216 PRIMULA HIRSUTA (var. Mrs. WILSON) 136 ai: Ronen senna ; : _ 994 13. PRIMULA GIRALDIANA : : . 144 Susmukai Boat : 994 PRIMULA JULIAE. A “ F . 144 32, SAXIFRAGA BURSERIANA (var. GLORIA, 14, PRIMULA LICHIANGENSIS . . . 148 Rasa 256 Primuta Listert and P. For- eM aie se: : Se , _ 148 SAXIFRAGA CAESIA.. te: . 256 en ; 152 33. SaxirrRaca CoTYLEnON (hybrids) . 264 Pemoura Lrrroniana. : : _ 152 SAXIFRAGA OUNEATA . : : . 264 16. PRIMULA LUTEOLA . ; ae 34, SAXIFRAGA x Borisit : - - 280 PRIMULA MALACOEIDES ? : . 156 SAXIFRAGA GRISEBACHII . ~ - 280 17. PRIMULA MARGINATA . : m . 169 | 35. SAxirRaGa x FALDONSIDE. < . 288 PRIMULA MODESTA , ‘ , . 160 SaXIFRAGA X Haaail, A - - 288 18, PRIMULA MALVACEA . dt . . 168 | 36. SAXIFRAGA LONGIFOLIA . - - 296 PRIMULA PULVERULENTA , . 168 SAXIFRAGA OPPOSITIFOLIA . “ . 296 19. Priwuta Porssonr . - ‘ . 172 | 37. SAXIFRAGA RETUSA . ; 2 aoe PRIMULA PYONOLOBA , ° “ . 172 SAXIFRAGA STRAOHEYI ° ° » 312 VOL. I, vii viii PLATE 38. SaxirraGaA STRIBNRYI Septum ANGLICUM F 39. SepuM SEMPERVIVUM. SEDUM SEXANGULARE. 40. SCUTELLARIA INDICA (var. 1cA) . - 5 SEMPERVIVUM CILIATUM 4). SEMPERVIVUM ARACHNOIDEUM . SEMPERVIVUM DOELLIANUM 42. SEMPERVIVUM FIMBRIATUM . SempPERVivuM FuNockEr 43. SHORTIA GALACIFOLIA Sirene HooKkErr : VOL. la PLATES. PLATE 44, SOLDANELLA ALPINA . - - = 45. 46. TANAKAEA RADICANS. = : - THLASPI LIMOSELLAEFOLIUM E Tro.iuivus Pumitus . P ~ : VERONICA SATUREIOEIDES . = . VIOLA BOSNIAOA. - : > ° TULIPA PERSIOA. 4 : - » VioLta DUBYANA. - A . . VIOLA CALCARATA ,. : - ~ VIOLA HEDERACEA [ERPETION RENI- FORME] . : 4 Z / : WAHLENBERGIA PUMILIO . > . WaAHLENBERGIA SERPYLLIFOLIA. r THE ENGLISH ROCK=GARDEN N Nama Rockrothii, from California, has hairy foliage and white or purplish funnels of flowers in terminal heads on stems of 7 or 8 inches. It should be quite easy in open cool soil. Nananthea perpusilla, a very minutely dwarf and rather worthless little microscopic-flowered Composite from Colorado. Narcissus.—The large daffodils are unfitted for the rock-garden, less on account of their stature, indeed, than because they die so un- tidily, in flopping masses of yellow decay. For its higher reaches, however, if it be large enough in scale, they look superb, and their decadence is not noticed (still less if enshrouded by degrees in the developing leafage of such a thing as Potentilla nepalensis Willmottiae). But the smaller daffodils have their place everywhere in the fore- ground, and the most delicate of them rejoice in the conditions of the water-bed (and, indeed, they all like a generous supply of moisture at the root while growing). The most exquisite of all, the silver-pale N. Bulbocodium monophyllus, should have, of course, the daintiest corner, in soil almost wholly sandy, and very damp in spring, under the lee of a hot rock ; and over the whole garden may be peppered the minute charm of NV. minimus, a real miniature golden-trumpet daffodil of 2 inches or less; that is never in the way ; and, for the rest, are there not elaborate catalogues consecrated entirely to their worship, their needs, their beauties, and their preposterous prices ? Nardosmia fragrans is no more than Tussilago fragrans of former days; and N. frigida is, accordingly, hardly less close itself to the giant Coltsfoots, so valuable for their sweet and dowdy blooms in Sewinter. =} Narthecium.—The Bog-Asphodel may be established in the “peaty bog and there let alone, to gratify summer with its little fluffy (1,996) 1 II.—A NASSAWLA SERPENS. golden spikes as it does in the marshy places of the moors. Other species widely differ botanically, but not in the gardener’s eye. Nassawia serpens is a most curious oddity, wandering far through the coarsest shingle-slopes of the Falklands, with long trunks clad densely in overlapping toothed little leaves, and emerging at last to thicken into a close club-shaped head of blossoms at the end of each. Nepeta.—Though VV. Mussini is to some rock-gardeners the first and last word in decoration (being the admiration of all beholders everywhere in summer, with its countless long loose spraying spikes of smoke-blue blossom above the fine silver-grey herbage of the tufts) ; yet neither this nor any other of the race is really of nature sufficiently refined for the small garden, though in the large one a noble effect may be got by filling a broad stretch of worthless sunny soil with Nepeta, among drifts of Welsh Poppy and Iceland Poppy. There are many other large species, all easily to be done without, though none, again, are devoid of some value in high and remote corners which it is desired handsomely to fill; of smaller sorts, however, more fit for our purpose, there are NV. supina, like a little repent Mint, from the upmost hills of Caucasus, and NV. chionophila, which is grey, and loves the snows beside the high screes of the Persian Alps. If complete collections of the larger sorts be wanted, here is a selection of names: NN. caesarea, cataria (worthless except for the benefit of cats, who pursue the catnip as man pursues alcohol, and with very much the same effects), nepetella, nuda, Wilsoni, cyanea, grandiflora, and mac- rantha (two ways of making the same large-flowered promise. JN. macrantha also = Dracocephalum sibiricum). Nertéra depressa is a minute half-hardy New Zealand mat of creeping bright-green foliage in spreading cushions, all over which, after the unnoticeable flowers, develop quantities of glowing terra-cotta and scarlet balls of fruit like round comfits. It will be happy out of doors in a sheltered shady corner of the rock-work, in damp sandy loam ; and will even bear our winters, though pieces should always be dug off and potted up in autumn for safety’s sake. Nierembergia rivularis comes from the River Plate, where it sheets the damp muddy banks with its packed masses of small heart-shaped dark-green leaves, which emit an unimaginable profusion of very large and lovely pearl-pale cups or wide bells, like those of some exquisite Convolvulus dropped from heaven. In cultivation the plant is perfectly hardy, but rather uncertain, some people succeeding without effort in having carpets of it, covered with its delicate noble chalices all through the late summer and autumn; while others with 2 NUPHAR, NYMPHAEA, AND NELUMBIUM. much care never seem to make it happy at all. What is indicated, however (generally speaking), is a gentle sunny slope of very rich, but light and open loam, well-watered from beneath ; in gardens where the sun’s heat is southern, it might be better that the slope should turn away from it, but probably Nierembergia has no objection to sun in itself, and merely dislikes being parched ; so that abundant water would give it all its needs in open ground or shade. It can most readily be divided, as it rapidly forms wide dense carpets; but it is too often pulled pitilessly to pieces for the market, which is the reason of many failures with specimens so sickened of division that their only remain- ing thought in life is to fold their leaves in slumber and pass into the peace of death, where the trowel will no more trouble, nor the spade divide. There are others of this lovely race, but none to be trusted in our climate ; though in warm places success is met with in dealing with the no less beautiful but wholly different N. frutescens, which suggests a fine spraying Flax-bush with bigger, blue-white flowers, darkened at the eye, and delightfully abundant through summer. Noaea spinosissima expresses in the first syllable of its name, what the wise gardener will say when offered it. Nor need he even trouble to add “ Thank you.” Noccaea alpina is Hutchinsia alpina, and N. stylosa is Thlaspi stylosum. Nothoscordon fragrans. See under Allium. Notothlaspi rosulatum.—The Penwiper plant of New Zealand is a most beautiful shingle Crucifer of the high Southern Alps, where it forms a penwiper of thick fat leaves, and then emits a dense and solid pyramid about 9 inches high, of crowded large white flowers deliciously fragrant. NV. australe is no less snowy and sweet, but not so impres- sive. They gloriously replace Thiaspi in the Antarctic screes. Nuphar, Nymphaea, and Nelumbium.—tThere is no need at this time of day to expatiate on the glories of these, alike in foliage and blossom. All Water-lilies are of the easiest culture, requiring only to be planted at the bottom of a 3-foot pond, on mounds of grossly rich soil, and there let alone to grow wide every year and glorify the pool far on into autumn with their flowers in every gorgeous shade of colour except, as yet, blue. So much for the larger Water-lilies ; the smaller like a depth of 2 feet, and in the case of such babies as NV. Hel- vola, a depth of 6 inches will be ample. - And the Nuphars, too, dull Brandy-bottles in flower, but superb in the leaf, may thrive in shallow as in deeper waters (the upstanding foliage of the American species so showing better). But Nelwmbiwm should have a depth of nearly a foot, and then,.in winter, its department of the pool should be filled 3 NUPHAR, NYMPHAEA, AND NELUMBIUM. with bracken and topped with fir-boughs. Nelwmbium, indeed, has no right to such affectations as this supposed dread of frost, as anyone will know who has seen it ramping by the railway ditches far up into the frozen North of Japan, while in Tokio itself, of course, the plant is solid ice for half the winter. I should be more disposed to think that our trouble with Nelumbium arises always from our experimenting with over-divided rhizomes, that have no more going, nor even staying, power ; and that if we could get substantial, solid pieces (of N. specio- sum at least, and that from the North of Japan or the Tokio Plain), and brought them a little gently on in spring, before putting them out into rich muddy soil and some 9 inches or a foot of water in the sunniest place, we should have no further trouble about enjoying that glorious foliage which sways the Jewel of the Worldat its heart, when the huge leaves rock the dew-drop that they nurse—a shimmering globule of quicksilver in their glaucous cup ; even if we are never to see the holy flower, the type of the human soul, from black mud aspiring high to daylight, and there unfolding a sweet and radiant rosy purity undefiled by all the darkness it has traversed. Yet even of this I cannot think we must despair, if once our Lotus is established and gets all the sun- shine there is. Of Lotuses there are many ; but let us first succeed with one. Of the Water-lilies there are legion, species and hybrids, all of gloriousness untellable, and ever-increasing from year to year, as more and more colossal pink and crimson beauties appear at more and more colossal prices. But the tale of these things will be found at length in catalogues addicted to such matters; and the rock-garden has no business with them, but to look serenely down on a pond bedecked like the dream of some Indian princess of long ago, and see its own reflection there broken by great blossoms floating on the water, in rose and crimson and pink and pearl and copper and sulphur and saffron and snow, looking incredibly tropical to be, as they are, as hardy and even more vigorous than the poor little common white Water-lily that now seems so very remote and obscure a cousin of such regal gorgeousnesses. The obscurity of these, indeed, lies only in the causes that provoke their unfolding. Full sun is the usual notion of the key that unlocks them; and certainly so it often is; yet no less often have I gone by in the twilight of a sad grey day, or on a tranquil dull evening after rain, and found all the huge blossoms agape and glowing, with the rain still standing in globular diamonds over the marbled and mottled darkness of their leathern leaves. OENOTHERA. O Odontospermum maritimum is a silky-woolled neat Com- posite with golden flowers packed among shoots of greyish foliage, which, with its kin, may be seen tucked into the Maritime rocks of the Levant; but they are hardly hardy with us, nor very well worth the trouble of trying, were it not that failure would bring so little disappointment. Oenothéra.—American botanists have been having such games with the Evening Primroses that now there is really no knowing what is what, unless we ignore all these superfluous fal-lals, and stick simply to the good old name, without troubling our heads with Lavauzia, Pachylophus, Galpisia, Chylisma, Meriolyx, Onagra, Anogra, and all the other tiresome anagrams into which our thicker-blooded-than-water- friends across the Atlantic have lately been mangling the Evening Primroses. At the same time, the words are worth remembering, lest they creep into catalogues, and some day we repent in bankruptcy for having given 3s. 6d. for a flaming novelty called Pachylophus caespitosus, only to find that it was merely Oenothera caespitosa after all, of which it luckily chanced that our garden was already full. In any case the American Evening Primroses, ravishing though be the beauty of many (and usually easy to achieve), are not always soundly permanent in our climates, and should frequently be raised from seed or root cuttings, as well as accommodated with choice sunny places in especially light and sandy soil, where it will then be possible for them to despise several of our wet winters without too poignantly regretting the prairies from which they come. All the species are late- summer bloomers, and prodigal bloomers too, so that their merits are thereby enhanced, even if their very beauty have something a little lush and ephemeral and cheap about its look, that makes them seem unworthier still beside the brave brilliancy of a true-bred alpine. Here follow, then, the dwarfer sorts, leaving out the taller ones after .the persuasion of our own yellow Oe. biennis, which are all adequately dealt with by Herbaceous catalogues. Oe. acaulis has yellow flowers, lonely on stems of 6 inches or so. Oe. Arends, on the contrary, is the one really first-class plant in the family for the rock-garden—first-rate not only in the beauty of its flowers, that is, but also in the vigour and endurance of its nature. The plant is a hybrid from Oe. speciosa, and planted prudently in good open soil on a warm slope, it will take permanent possession of its place, spreading endlessly, and susceptible of endless division, suffering OENOTHERA. nothing to interfere with the lavish and unceasing display, all summer through, of its large and lovely flowers of melting delicate rich rose- and-white on stems of 5 or 6 inches or so. ; Oe. caespitosa is also beautiful, forming tufts and mats about 4 inches high with blossoms of rosy pink. Oe. eximia or marginata is another lovely thing, but specially deli- cate, running and creeping about in specially hot sandy soil, and producing abundant ample blossoms of white on quite dwarf stalks. Oe. Fraseri, fruticosa, glabra, are all taller in growth, with hand- some yellow flowers; of which Oe. fruticosa has given two valuable garden varieties in Oe. I’. Eldorado and Youngii, particularly free and brilliant in the blossom, as well suited to the border as to the rock- garden, if not better. Oe. Howardii is now the shining light of Lavauaia in America, and in our gardens it often masquerades also as Oe. brachycarpa. It is a neat ramifying tuft of tall, very narrow leaves, greyish-hoary at first ; among which sit vast lonely Evening Primroses of deep, rich yellow, on stems of 3 or 4inches. Itisa pretty thing, and might be associated perhaps with Campanula alpestris, did it not usually come too late into the field to make a contrast. Oe. macrocarpa or Missouriensis is an especially fine species for the rock-garden, for, though the stems are tall, they do not stand up, but stagger and lie down over the faces of rocks, in such a way as to give the fullest value to the plant’s especially enormous cups of pure clear citron-yellow all through the later summer. It is also a good hearty perennial, asking only for ordinary rich loam in the sun. Oe. mexicana has a name for pinkness, but is rather to be distrusted. Oe. ovata is greatly advertised. It makes neat and rather leafy rosettes on the ground, and then, among their leaves produces all through the summer a quantity of little yellow Evening Primroses not quite large enough to redeem the weedish look of the rosette, though in themselves both bright and abundant, it is true, on any sunny slope. Oe. pumila has the same stature and the same flowers of yellow. Oe. riparia is advertised. There are far too many obscure plants that go to make up the large and misty personality that is meant by almost all the foregoing names. Oe. serrulata grows 6 inches high, still with little yellow Evening Primroses. Oe. speciosa is taller at times than even the rose-pink Oe. pallida its relative; this species is notably beautiful, but much the finest form is that called Oe. sp. rosea, with flowers of more brilliant rose, and a more modest habit. This, if suited, in a hot garden and sandy hot soil, 6 OMPHALODES. runs about insatiably and fills the whole place; in cooler gardens and ground it often proves impossible to keep. There is also a hybrida of great merit, if indeed it be not synonymous with Oe. Arendsit, q.v. And there are other species frequently advertised and offered, with regard to all of which the collector would be well advised not only to remember the psammophilous proclivities of this sun- worshipping and southerly race, but also that the family, its relation- ships and differences, are all still wrapped in impenetrable mystery, so that true, definite, finally-established species are not by any means easy to come by ina group of plants as polymorphic as a range of clouds at sundown. Omphalddes.—A race of Borrages, as a rule, almost excessively - beautiful, from common little Blue-eyed Mary to the rarest new- comer from the East. Their nearest relations are Paracaryum, Myosotis, Cynoglossum, and Lnthospermum. All can be well raised from seed, and most of them divided. O. cappadocica (sometimes called O. Witmanniana, and O. cornifolia, Lehm.) makes a neat tuft of oval pointed leaves, dark above and greyish-pale beneath, from which in early summer and autumn, spring many very graceful loose sprays of 6 inches or so, unfurling a string of lovely large Forget-me-nots, beautifully deep-blue, scattered and airy in effect. This thrives quite easily in: any rich well-drained loam, in rather shady exposures such as would suit O. verna; it is native to similar shady places and copses in Lazic Pontus, Cappadocia, &c. O. florariensis is said to be a hybrid between O. Luciliae and O.nitida, from which its beauty, if not its culture, may be imagined. O. Ikumae is a dainty little lovely Japanese plant, fine and frail, suggesting a compromise between O. Luciliae and O. verna. O. japonica is even finer, having more flowers, and greater vigour of port, but otherwise suggesting the same relationship as the last. _ O. Luciliae throws down the gauntlet to gardeners. Where happy it runs about and sows itself and turns a weed ; in other places, not happy, it yet more promptly turns a corpse. The aim of this fairy’s typical need (though occasionally in some gardens it may be otherwise suited), isa light yet rich loam, half filled with mortar rubble and lime- chips, so arranged upon the rock-work as to have the most perfect drain- age and the fullest sun, yet without being parched or parboiled. It is so that the plant, a true crevice-lover, forms enormous bushy masses of its lovely glaucous foliage, long and waxy-blue and smooth-oval- pointed, in the sheer walls of Parnassus (above Mana Rachova), Sipylus, Cadmus, and other god-haunted mountains of Asia Minor, delighting those inhospitable rocks with abundant loose sprays of (; OMPHALODES. its round blank-looking flat flowers in the most delicate pearly tones of very pale porcelain-blue or sun-kissed snowy rose, seeming there to develop like natural emanations from the blueness of the foliage. In the garden, however, where O. Luciliae, if well-drained, will come readily from seed, the glaucousness of the seedlings is not to be trusted ; and, without that, lovely as are the blossoms themselves, thrown out all through the summer, they lose half their value if they do not spring from that cool blue tuft beneath, whose colour they so delicately should complete. And, on the other hand, unless you be specially favoured by fortune, you will not want to hack and harry an established tuft of O. Luciliae. So that prescriptions for propagation are apt on many counts to prove unprofitable. In the moraine, too, it grows readily, but slugs will even pursue it across the harsh surface that they hate ; and its safest and most characteristic place will always be in some ancient sunny wall, introduced into a crevice as a young cutting, and there left to grow large if it will, through many successive seasons. In specially hot climates, though, the sun-heat should be counteracted by abundance of water, administered subterraneously if possible (drive a drain-pipe or pot down into the coping of the wall above the plant, and keep it periodically filled), during the growing season, if not indeed from April straight away till the end of August. O. nitida (O. lusitanica) is a pretty species, but perhaps the least worthy perennial of its family. In a damp warm corner it makes large clumps like those of some magnified O. verna, that is content to sit at home ina tuft ; from this, all the late summer through, it sprays about a lavish number of fine stems, about a foot high, waving this way and that, with a profusion of blue stars that, brilliant as they are, suffer a little in effect by being rather meanly proportioned for the size of the plant—not so large or stimulating, for stance, as in O. verna or O. cappadocica. None the less, it is both useful and hearty and beautiful, and should have care, for it is not always perfectly hardy in raw climates, luxuriating as it does most especially in quite damp places such as are often therefore heavy and cloying as cold suet in winter. It is native to cool shady hollows throughout North- Western Spain in the lower mountain region. O. rupestris must be looked for with eager longing in the cliffs between Vladikafkas and Tiflis, on Bolta at about 2500 feet. For it bids fair to be the loveliest of all—a compact and dense little tuffet, all shining with a pure close coat of silver, and not 2 inches high. The stems hardly emerge from the shining mat of leafage, but throw out very delicate threadlike foot-stalks in all directions, each carrying a single glorious blue flower as large as in O. cappadocica, and most 8 VoL. OMPHALODES LUCILIAE (Photo. R. A. Malby.) ONONIS. lovely to behold, hovering so exquisitely on the gleaming silver cushion, almost as if flowers of Eritrichium were beginning to take flight from one of his cushions, feeling that earth is no more worthy of their heavenly beauty. O. Thomsoni makes a good sound perennial root-stock, up in the desolations of Western Tibet at 13,000 feet ; and from this sends up a rich multitude of fine slender branching stems, roughish to the touch, and showering forth the family stars of azure, lax and airy. O. verna, they say (whoever They may be), was the favourite flower of Queen Marie-Antoinette ; was it part of her hapless naturalness that she brought with her, into the scented court of Versailles, a child’s remembered love of Blue-eyed Mary, rambling in the woods of Schen- brunn far away back in the days of sunlight, across the darkening unnoticed shadow of her world’s end? For Blue-eyed Mary is a subject of the Hapsburgs, and in many a mountain copse and stony place of the Eastern ranges may be seen its trailing shoots of heart-shaped bright-green foliage, from which spray forth deep azure Forget-me-nots in a scattered drift of blue sparks from February till May. And even so, no matter under what ill-treatment, will Blue-eyed Mary, the scullion of her cosseted race, behave in copses and woody corners of England, no matter how weedy and worthless and forgotten. There is also a white form, most delicate and beautiful, but hardly to compare with the typical Omphalodean splendour of clear turquoise. As for the multiplication of Blue-eyes, she herself will look to that ; and, in any case, can endlessly be divided, and pulled to pieces, and struck. Onobrychis.—Not a choice race of Pea-flowers, nor of value in the rock-garden, though in the Alps their pea-flowered spikes of dazzling rose have much attraction, and often so fill the high poor levels as to colour the distances. O. sativa is the common Sainfoin, and O. montana its more vivid alpine development; it is dwarfer than the lowland plant, and so is O. lasiostachya, with spikes of flaming pink. O. arenaria and O. petraea are about a foot high, the former pink, and the latter purplish. But all are of a lax and straggling habit, and, though melliferous in a high degree, not urgently needed in the rock-garden. Onodnis.—A family of half shrubby or quite shrubby Pea-flowers, of which the common Rest-harrow is a type (and, in its best forms, by no means without its merits as a carpet for some hot and perfectly worthless place). Much dwarfer yet, however, and fine and frail and quite peculiarly choice and charming, is prostrate small O. cenisia, about whose character uncertainty hangs. For the species is one I have never succeeded in finding on the very limited habitat in its name- ONOSMA. place, but which I know to be abundant at far lower levels in the burnt barrens about Lanslebourg (as in the pine-zone on all formations here and there in the Alps of Italy, Southern France, and Spain). So that doubt, inspired by doleful experience, leads me to fear that the plant may not be of any sufficing hardiness and endurance. It should be grown from seed, and tried in hot dry places and moraines and so forth, well in the foreground, as fits its small proportions and the surpassing charm of its rosy flowers, which are very fine and large for the plant—little pink-and-white pea-blossoms dancing merrily on fine stems each by itself above the trailing mat of minute and hairless silver-greyish trefoils with toothed edges. O. fruticosa is a good shrub of a yard high with blossoms of bright pink, which, like all Ononids, children of the parched and blazing South, should have, in the garden, a parched and blazing place in very deep light soil ; another of the same kidney is O. Natriz, being a robustious, sticky herbaceous plant, about 2 feet tall, rank and overwhelming, with heads of large and brilliant yellow flowers. It is uncommon in the Swiss Alps, but becomes quite frequent further South, in dry banks and roadsides and rail- way cuttings of the warmer ranges. Some accuse it of a special fad for lime; but in the Alps it has always seemed to me to ask only heat and a worthless rough place, as for a rare instance, in Switzerland, among the rough herbage on the sun-trodden slopes going up to Evolena. Among the best, however, for the rock-garden is really O. rotundifolia, which makes a pleasant little bush about a foot high, with large soft scalloped leaves in leaflets of three, among which, all the summer through, appear large and lovely Pea-flowers of rich pink with a paler keel, standing out on stems of their own in groups of two or three. This may abundantly be seen in the grand woods above Lanslebourg, and, like all Ononids, should either be raised from seed, or collected only in yearling seedlings, the roots of these being quite long enough, but those of older plants are interminable, woody, and wholly impracticable in their single-trunked distaste for disturb- ance. And yet another bushy species is of special value for a sunny place, and breaks fresh ground in colour. Thisis O. aragonensis, which stands boldly up and furnishes the garden with rather crowded yellow blossoms. Even finer than this, however, is O. speciosa, the best of all, being a very sticky, twiggy bush about 3 or 4 feet high, with all the upper axils emitting clusters of a few flowers till each shoot seems a loose spire of golden bloom. This is the Rascavieja of Spain, where it abounds in hot rocks and stony places of the South up to about 2500 fect in Granada. Onosma, 2 most prime race for the rock-garden, of which we have 10 ONOSMA. only yet touched the fringe, and as to which catalogues are still but scantily informed and greatly confused. The chief of the family is Southern and Levantine, and insists absolutely on hot exposures and specially well-drained loam, quite light and usually limy. All can be raised freely from foreign seed, and, in England, multiplied by cuttings. The blooming-time is in summer from June forwards, and no race is more noble for hot and open ledges. And, in the first place, to have our ground clear of vain cumberers, the following species are of little value, either on account of their provenance, or their ugliness, or their biennial habit: J/.MZ. microspermum, gracile, molle, kilowjense, Olivieri, chlorotrichum, Kotschyi, rhodopeum, Emodi, Wallichit, gigant- eum, taygetewm, Sprungeri, and hebebulbum. O. albo-roseum has the habit of O. fruticosum. It is a sub-shrub, very dense indeed with starry down, making masses of oblong blunt leaves, and sending up croziers that uncurl with sumptuous hoary- velvet bugles that range from white to blood-colour and blue, with notably broad lobes to the calyx. This beautiful species haunts the limestone cliffs of Amasia and Eastern Cappadocia, and though often well grown in gardens, is thankful for a little special warmth and protection from winter wet. It is a twin in many ways to our well- known O. tauricum. O. arenarium, from the nearer Alps, has much the habit of O. tauricum also, but with flowers of yellow. O. armenum is like a dwarf pale O. tauricum, but the sprays of bloom are in short heads instead of unfurling sprays. O. bicolor is a foot or more in height, with purple flowers. O. Bodeanum rises to 6 or 9 inches, with a great number of erect stems, springing from tufts of pale green leaves about an inch and a half long, set with hairs that rise from smooth wartlets. The stems are leafy and graceful, each carrying a few-flowered head of large violet bells. (From Bachtiar in Persia.) O. Bourgaei grows in the alpine regions of Turkish Armenia, and its stalks are about a foot high, carrying curled-up dense sprays of white blossoms emerging from a fluffy calyx, each depending on a short petiole. The leaves are narrow and as long as their stems, and the whole plant is softly hairy with close-pressed down. O. bracteatum is an Indian high-alpine, more of an Echium, with stems of 15 inches or so, and dense little sprigs of yellow flower all up the stout bristlish stems in dense array. O. caespitosum may be seen in the impregnable cliffs of Buffavento in Crete above the ruins of the Queen’s Castle; where it forms tight masses of fat finely-downy foliage lying in rosettes with closely leafy ONOSMA. small stems of 2 or 3 inches, displaying ultimately flowers of tawny yellow. O. cassium has a more stately stature, attaining 18 inches, with unbranched erect or ascendent stalks clothed in smooth, blunt, half stem-embracing foliage, about an inch and a half long, and set with smooth tubercles or wartlets. The flowers are yellow. (From Northern Syria, Amanus, &c.) O. coeruleum is all rough with short grey hairs, and the stems rise to some 5 or 10 inches, unfolding showers of blue and white in the cliffs of Antilibanus. O. dasytrichum has few-flowered close heads of violet blossom, on silky-haired erect shoots from a woody stock. (Alps of Southern Persia.) O. decipiens, Schott and Ky. =O. nanum, q.v. O. echioeides ranges from Europe to the Levant, and may always be known from all forms of O. tauricum by the very specially short footstalks of the flowers that do not, as in the others, after flowering exactly equal the calyx in length. It is the O. stellulatum genuinum of Boissier. In other words, it is not at all far from O. tauricum in garden needs and value. It also has varieties O. e. brachycalyx and O. e. brachyphyllum. O. erectum is a small-growing sub-species of O. stellulatum, from the sea-rocks of Crete, up to 5000 feet on Cretan Ida. It is most neat and attractive, with bugles of a more golden-orange than in O. tauricum, which, it must be remembered, ranked originally as a mere narrow-leaved variety of the very polymorphic O. stedlulatum; so that O. stellulatum still serves as the standard of comparison for O. tauricum and all its kindred. O. flavum has the full serene beauty of O. sericeum, silver coat and all, but sometimes the plant is clothed in russet down instead, and always the seed-nuts are smooth. O. frutescens is O. echioeides of the Flora Graeca. It is specially branching, half shrubby at the base, and rough and downy with close- pressed hairs. The leaves are oblong-paddle-shaped, and the bending stems spring up in abundance, and on their 6-inch branches bear the most beautiful big heads of big flowers that range from yellow to pink and violet. This glorious species occupies the rocks of Attica and all Greece, and so down to Palestine, on Hermon and Carmel. O. fruticosum is found some 2000 feet up in Crete. It has long woody branches and blossoms that vary from white to yellow, some dozen or more to the mound of blossom. O. halophilum may justly be said to love salt. For it inhabits 12 ONOSMA. certain cold salty plains of Lycaonia, beneath Kara Dagh, which in winter are under water. This extreme eccentricity of taste (and doubly extreme in an Onosma) does not deter it from forming tawny- green rosettes of broadish, oblong leaves, round which, from below, spring up stems of 6 or 10 inches, unfurling heads of white velvet blooms. It is not shrubby at the base. O. helveticum stands quite close in habit to O. arenarium. It has green bristlish foliage and flowers of pale yellow, after the style of O. tauricum, with which, however (vain words notwithstanding), it has no specific affinity whatever. (German Alps of the South, and away to Crete through the high mountain rocks of Epirus, &c.) O. Hookeri is a hairy Esau from some 14,000 feet in Sikkim, with stems that vary between 3 and 6 inches or more, carrying fluffy heads of large violet flowers as ample in size as those of O. echioeides. This plant it is that yields the red dye of the Lepchas, and has lent itself thus to the long feud between the yellow- and the Onosma-capped monks of Tibet. O. isauricum comes so close to O. sericeum as only to be distin- guished by the stellate tubercles on the leaves. O. lanceolatum comes from the grassy places of Kurdistan, and is all ashy-grey, the lower leaves being three-nerved on the under-side, while the flower-stems are half a foot or a foot high. O. latifolium haunts the same quarters, but precisely follows the fashion of O. dasytrichum, except that it is herbaceous and not half- shrubby, and the whole mass is vested in a thick grey coat ; while the flowers are not violet, but yellow. O. liparoeides, from the mountains of Cappadocia, is a pleasant little thing, as smoothly and platedly silver as O. sericewm itself, but quite neat and dwarf, with stems not more than 4 inches high or a little more. The white flower hardly emerges from the calyx, however, which is cut into strips so thoroughly as even to become feathery. O. mite makes masses of soft wool, as its name declares, and the masses are but 2 inches high, while the erect-lobed yellow blossoms are borne in heads on stems of seven ornine. This will require cherishing, as its home is in the hot pine-stretches of Lycia and Cyprus. O. montanum, if this be more than a superfluous form, is only 4 inches high, so it is said, with flowers of clear yellow. O. mutabile is also about 6 inches high and nobly beautiful, having the general habit and stature of O. albo-roseum, all the clump being clothed in grey hairs, and the plant half-shrubby and branching. But the large bell-drops pass from yellow to pink and blue, and the 13 ONOSMA. dainty small stature distinguishes it. (From between 6000 to 9000 feet on Berydagh.) O. nanum is O. decipiens, Schott and Ky. It is a beautiful stranger from the high Alps of Cappadocia, on Gisyl Tepe, &c., at about 6000 feet, tawny all over with an abundance of bristlish hair, and closely tufted with a great number of stiff little stems of 2 or 4 inches, rising from the many-headed mass, which is furnished with narrow-oblong blunt leaves, longish and rather rolled over at the edges, and with a con- spicuous midrib on the under-side. The stems unfold at last into showers of large velvety white bells, few to a spray. O. oreodoxum is a Hill-glory on the appropriately named Mount Climax in Pisidia, being very like O. cassitum, with stems of 18 inches or 2 feet, but the calyces are longer, densely white with downy hairs, and exuding whitish bells with sharper lobes. O. ovalifolium stands close to O. Bourgaei, but has only quite small and scattered tubercles on the leaves. O. pachypodum, from the schistose rocks of Elburs, has its nearest relation in O. flavum, from which it chiefly differs in having pale-green leafage sparingly set with hairs. The stems are about a foot high, but the yellowish corolla is rather longer, being about an inch. O. polyphyllum makes a sub-shrubby mass in the rocks of Southern Taurus. The leaves are about 2 inches long, and remarkably narrow, pointed and rolled over at the edge, very closely huddled in the cushion, and clad in a double coat of tightly ironed-down short hairs, which, further up, get looser and longer and rather tawny. The stems are some 4 or 5 inches high in nature, and the flowers are large and white. O. procérum stands near O. oreodoxum, but is an obscure species with a hairy nectary for sole distinction at present—and this is only a sort of O.B_E. in the race. O. pyramidale is a Himalayan, to be quoted with doubt. It is described as being rather tender (perhaps monocarpic), about 2 feet high, with yellow flowers. O. Rascheyanum is a most longed-for species from Antilibanus, near akin to O. stellulatum, but only 6 inches high, yet with a much more shrubby rootstock. And the flowers are in smooth, hoar- frosted heads, of polychromatic variety, while the whole growth is clothed in rough and spreading vesture of hairs and bristles. O. rostellatum has a much softer character, although its stem be neither taller nor shorter. It is mild in soft down, and its dwarfish shoots are many and frail and branching, emerging from tufts of oblong leaves and unfurling into lax sprays of blue and blue-and- 14 ONOSMA. white blossoms about half as long as the calyx, with the blue stamens sticking far out. It hangs from the undercut precipices of Mesopotamia, &c. ; O. Roussaet may be found in the rocks by the Cedars of Lebanon, and in the chalky hills of Aleppo. It is a neat dwarf mass and very like O. armenum, but that the leaves are much longer, and the yellow flower stands much further out of the calyx, in heads of blossom about 6 inches tall. . O. rupesire, from the Iberian Caucasus, Tiflis, &c., and the rocks of Cappadocia, is a tidy ash-grey mass of foliage with short narrowly paddle-shaped leaves an inch or less in length, and stems of 4 or 6 inches, unbranching, or almost wholly unbranching, and hanging out cylindric citron-coloured bugles. O. sericeum is one of the most lovely among the most lovely. It makes regular rosettes of rather broad-oval leaves sheeted in quite smooth pure silver of the best quality, untarnishable but by autumnal rains ; from which in due course ascend stems of blossom that divide near the top into two sprays each hanging out a carillon of long creamy-yellow bells. This gem requires the warmest and the best- drained place of all, as we may learn not only by sad experience, but also from the enlightening information that in nature it especially affects the dry sub-alpine stony places in Anatolia, Caucasus, Transcaucasia, &c. O. simplicissimum.—Simple Simon shows his character by going voluntarily to live in Russia and Siberia, where he makes big tuffets of yellowish-green foliage, sparsely hairy, very narrow, and more or less pointed and rolled at the edges. The plant is almost shrubby at the base, and from the mass ascend a crowd of stems some 6 inches or a foot tall, carrying heads of whitish-velvet flowers. O. stamineum is also a semi-Russian. It is fairly roughish, in a cluster of many crowns with many uprising unbranched stems of half a foot or more, beset with small sessile narrow leaves, and evolving into almost cylindrical short spikes of blue flowers, with their lobes curling back, and their anthers sticking out. O. rostellatum has suggested this, but here the blossoms are twice and a half again as long as the calyx. O. stellulatum.—This is the species that has given botanists as much trouble as its beauty is worth to gardeners. We may take our common OQ. tauricum as its complete picture, seeing that at first O. tauricum was ranked as a mere variety, though now differentiated as'a species on small botanical grounds presently to be recounted. The type, anyhow, ranges through Greece into Asia Minor, and takes 15 ONOSMA. a large number of varieties, many of which have now been promoted into species. Of such are O. erectum, q.v., and O. tauricum, Pallas, q.v. (formerly O. stellulatum); angustifolium of Boissier (O. scorpioeides, Huet.), a narrower-leaved form, more ashen-grey in its leaf-colouring. Then there were O. s. pallidum with whitish flowers, and O. s. brevi- folium, a neat little mountain form from the higher Alps of Lycia, Caria, &c., passing into O. erectum,; while even O. echioeides was once Boissier’s typical O. stellulatum genuinum, so that there is but little left of the original O. stellulatum to-day ; though you may still know it as a species apart by the fact that its flower-stems are as long as the calyces after blooming, unlike the very short pedicels of O. echioeides, while from O. tauricum (which is the same in this respect) it differs also in broader foliage and much less dense investiture of greyness. But, Lord, what nice quillets are these, in the case of a species so variable and widely spread ! O. strigosissimum is rough as the ways of the world all over. But otherwise a pleasant small plant, having the habit of O. frutescens, though not half-shrubby at the base, but wholly herbaceous, with short stems of 6 inches or so, and the same lovely large variable flowers of yellow and pink and violet. (Sea-rocks of the Aegean.) O. tauricum.—Our well-beloved favourite old Onosma, the one and only Golden Drop of the garden, has already been amply differ- entiated from its close cousins. Its flower-pedicels do not equal the calyces after flowering as in O. stellulatum, while the leaves are narrower, and the plant greyer altogether with ashen hairs. That being said, we can all rejoice in its wide enormous masses of narrow grey flopping foliage, out of which summer calls such gracious croziers of hanging ample flowers of a waxy and lemony lusciousness peculiar to them- selves, and exactly asking for the name of Golden Drop in their melting confectionery clarity of colour and texture. The hot bank that suits all has had this for its inmate many years ; it will strike from cuttings, and always behaves itself in the garden with heartiness and decorum ; one of the best and most characteristic of easy-going beautiful Bor- ragineous rock-plants. O. Thompsoni is really Echium rather than Onosma. It is perennial in warm, well-drained soil, forming a deep root with several crowns, and sending up in late summer a number of very stiff and stout stems of 18 inches more or less, set all the way with tight clusters of small ruby-coloured Echium-flowers packed in a spike up the stalks. The whole growth is rough and hispid, and, though noble enough and brilliant in its unyielding way, hardly deserves to enter so brilliant a company as Onosma. (It comes from some 6000 feet up in Sikkim.) 16 OPUNTIA. O. Tréodi, from the crevices of Troodos in Crete, is a twin to O. nanum in minute habit, but has even smaller leafage (not rough, but clad in tighter-ironed downy hairiness), and very much smaller yellowish flowers huddled in a head. O. velutinum only differs from O. nanum, the beautiful, in a soft and velvety, not bristlish, vesture, in denser clumps of rather smaller blossom, and in leaves that lack the midrib beneath and the rolled edge. (Alpine region of the Bithynian Olympus.) Onosmodium molle (and 0. occidentale, of which it is a variety) are Borragineous plants of no noticeable merit. Ophelia, a family of Gentianaceous plants, closely allied to Swertia, and sometimes merged in Swertia. Their treatment is the same, and their attractions on a par. Opuntia, with Cereus and Echinocereus.—