REVIVAL of interest in the wild garden has brought into deserved notice and appreciation many of our native plants, but there are some others, native in the southern states, for which I would like to speak a word in season.

My last and loveliest venture in this direction was Lobelia cardinalis, whose native habitat is creek sides, swamps and boggy places, so that, though I had admired it long, I was afraid that in my high and dry upland garden it would refuse to grow. But one autumn its glowing spikes of brilliant scarlet were tempting beyond resistance, and I transplanted it while in full blossom, making it as comfortable as possible in a partially shaded spot with a northeastern exposure. Strange to say, it grew! finished expanding the flowers on its spike, and sent up new shoots from the root which were green all winter, and gave each a brilliant spike of bloom in autumn. The cardinal flower is one of our richest colored natives. It has found its way into one florist's catalogue, and is surely well worthy a place in any garden. The seed vessels are large and conspicuous, and the plant increases from the seed quite rapidly and easily.

Sanguinaria canadensis is the old bloodroot, with fragile, starry, snow-white blossoms, disappearing so rapidly in the wake of the root-digger and herb dealer that unless it is taken into our gardens there is danger of its vanishing entirely. It is one of the earliest of the spring wild flowers, and is quite amenable to culture, given a loose, somewhat sandy soil and a partially shaded eastern exposure. The bloom is much larger in cultivated than in wild specimens, and being snow-white, six-petaled and shapely, with a center of golden anthers, it is a very "lovely, modest flower." The petals are not very persistent, and fall in three or four days, but new buds keep crowding up, and when flowers disappear, the thick leathery leaves of a silvery purplish green, with crimson stalks and veins, are very handsome.

Another wild plant with beautiful leaves is the Erythronium Americanum or Dogstooth violet. Early in the spring they come pushing up from the tiny bulbs which are found in somewhat damp and shaded places. Under favorable circumstances, when cultivated, these leaves will grow to a length of seven or eight inches; their shape is ovate acuminate, with a shining green surface, marbled and mottled with white and dark brown. The little nodding lily of pure lemon yellow, with center of dark brown stamens, is also very beautiful. Its petals are about four inches long, recurved, and the flower remains perfect for a long while. It can be forced into bloom very early, treated in the same way that Bermuda lilies are, with only half the heat which they require.

A writer in the London Garden recently called attention to another of our own native plants, which deserves more consideration and cultivation than it is at all likely to receive. The Garden's description is quite true and appreciative. "It is a strange fact that while many flowers of doubtful value are widely distributed in gardens, some real treasures, for no apparent reason, are overlooked. Such has been the fate of the lovely little foam flower, and though it is a perfectly hardy plant of rapid increase, flourishing in almost any soil and position, and has been in our botanic gardens for one hundred and fifty years, it is only now that it is becoming known. It is a plant of great beauty, both of leaf and flower; the little starry flowers are creamy white, the buds delicately tinged with pink, a good mass of them seen a few yards off having a close likeness to a wreath of foam. The young leaves are a tender green, daintily spotted and veined with deep red, while the older ones at the base of the plant are of a rich red bronze. Whether planted in a rock-garden or border, it is a beautiful and delightful plant.

It is a valuable plant to pot in autumn, and force from a cold-frame in early spring." This "foam flower" is our Fiarella cord-ifolia or false mitrewort, a hardy perennial, very noticeable in winter on rocky hillsides by reason of its tufts of crimson leaves, and in spring by its masses of fluffy fringed white flowers. Planted in any garden soil, with the weeds kept down about it, it thrives and blooms finely. These native beauties have been selected from a long list, as being a few of the most neglected and most deserving.

Lennie Greenlee.

North Carolina.