A Flowers For Every Day Polygonum

Several new forms of Polygonum affne have come to us from recent expeditions and they are grown extremely well in the rock garden at Kew. The most brilliant is the Loundes' variety, with much finer flowers.

Although I admit its good qualities, I find Corydalis keteus rather too persistent in its seeding habits and spend much time tearing it from walls and flower beds. Now the pale-flowered form, C. ochrekuca, is another matter and my complaint with it is that it doesn't seed at all—at least not with me. With great care I put my newly acquired plant in a part of the garden where I have none of the common variety, and I hoped I should soon have a colony of seedlings, but so far there haven't been any. Most evergreen corydalis seed them well. The ferny- leaved Corydon: cheilanthifolia sows itself and produces its yellow- green flowers for months on end. They look very pretty against the bronze leaves. Even more attractive is the soft rose madder Cogdalis rubra which has foliage in the most delicate hi If-tones and flowers to match.

Antirrhinum asarina either likes you very much or not at all. In some gardens it seeds itself so much that it is a nuisance and in others it won't grow at all, let alone seed. I like its pale primrose flowers and grey-green leaves and its habit of trailing down over stones, and for years I tried it in different parts of the garden without success. It was not until it was planted in a large stone sink filled with greensand that it settled down at all, and once growing well it started seeding, and very soon there were trails down the front of the trough and seedlings in every corner, mingling with the bright blue flowers of Parochetus communis.

Eomecon cbionantha has something of a halo, probably because it is not very well known. Perhaps that is just as well, because most of the people who grow it find it a nuisance. It has very nice leaves shaped rather like a large nasturtium and with a pleasant glaucous finish. It is sometimes called the "Cyclamen Poppy"; I don't know why because its leaves don't look much like cyclamen leaves. Its other name, "Poppy of the Dawn", doesn’t raise any queries in one's mind. The flowers are pretty and they do look like small poppies with white petals and large yellow centres. They start in summer and will go on till October and November, but do not flower very much for me, and other people seem to have the same experience. The plant is a runner and I often wonder if it would flower better if we could find some means of controlling its wandering stems and make it give a little more thought to producing flowers.
 I agree its foliage is almost as beautiful as that of bocconia, but I feel I should like it more if it kept to one place instead of appearing some yards from the parent plant. It is a wily plant, for one treats its succulent stems with great respect, thinking they are as brittle as those of Dicentra spectabile, whereas they have the iron will of such plants as Cogdalis lutues, which looks brittle and fragile and yet finds a foothold in all sorts of places from which it cannot be easily removed It is a good thing that some of the less spectacular plants flower late in the year; it is so easy to overlook them at their ordinary flowering time if that comes when a great many plants are in bloom, most of which are more showy. I noticed a plant of marjoram blooming in a friend's garden in late October and learned it was the Bury Hill form of Origanum vulgate, with heliotrope and indigo flowers on slender dark stems. In a sunny spot it makes a good companion for Oxon:floribunda.

Origanum laevigatum is even more attractive, but it is a good thing that it flowers late in the year when there is not much competition. From a tight carpet of dark, glucose leaves less than an inch high rise  slender stems which have corymbs of small violet flowers. It grows rather slowly and so is not very easy to increase. I have it growing next to the blue flax, Linton perenne, with the rich claret Cosmos atrosanguineus, very near, and the colors blend very happily.

Serratula shawii is another rather subdued little plant which has considerable charm if only one takes the trouble to find it. The flowers are of the cornflower type, rather small and in a subdued shade of mauve. They nestle in delicate bronze ferny foliage. The plant doesn't increase very fast but its roots run slightly and hang on, so that when once it has been grown in the garden small pieces will come up in the same place each year, even though the original plant has been moved elsewhere. It makes a good companion for the grey leaves of Geranium gnardii.

The other serratula I grow, S. coronata, flowers a little earlier and is as big as the other is tiny. The flowers are the same thistle shape and dark purple in color and they come on 5' stems. The whole plant is very strong and massive and could well be used in a place where something as big and dense as a shrub is needed.

Blue flowers tone most beautifully with dwarf chrysanthemums, particularly the little blue daisies that flower so frenziedly in the autumn. ThoughAsterpappeiand Agathaeacoelestis do start flowering in late summer, it is not till late September and October that they really get going, and then they seem to produce as many flowers as they can before frosts finish their season. They are not hardy and must be kept going with cuttings. If one has a greenhouse the flowering plants can be lifted, potted and transferred to the greenhouse where they will flower all through the winter. Aster pappei has very fine, dark green foliage and in Agathaeacoelestis the leaves are wider, more the size and shape of box, but both have the small kingfisher-blue daisies that are so welcome in the autumn.