This section is from the book "The Wild Garden", by W. Robinson. Also available from Amazon: William Robinson: The Wild Gardener.
A herbaceous plant of fine and distinct port, bearing purplish-blue blossoms, rather uncommon among its kind. Till recently it was generally only seen in botanic gardens, but it has, nevertheless, many merits as a wild garden plant, and for growing in small groups or single specimens in quiet green corners of pleasure-grounds or shrubberies. It does best in rather rich ground, and in such a position will reward all who plant it, being a really hardy and long-lived perennial. The foliage is sometimes over a yard long, and the flower-stems attain a height of over six feet in good soil.
 
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