In early April there is quite a wealth of flower among plants that belong half to wood and half to garden. Epimedium pinnatum, with its delicate, orchid-like spike of pale-yellow bloom, flowers with its last year's leaves, but as soon as it is fully out the young leaves rush up, as if hastening to accompany the flowers. Dentaria pinnata, a woodland plant of Switzerland and Austria, is one of the handsomest of the white-flowered cruciferæ, with well-filled heads of twelve to fifteen flowers, and palmate leaves of freshest green. Hard by, and the best possible plant to group with it, is the lovely Virginian Cowslip (Mertensia virginica), the very embodiment of the freshness of early spring. The sheaf of young leafage comes almost black out of the ground, but as the leaves develop, their dull, lurid colouring changes to a full, pale green of a curious texture, quite smooth, and yet absolutely unreflecting. The dark colouring of the young leaves now only remains as a faint tracery of veining on the backs of the leaves and stalks, and at last dies quite away as the bloom expands. The flower is of a rare and beautiful quality of colour, hard to describe—a rainbow-flower of purple, indigo, full and pale blue, and daintiest lilac, full of infinite variety and indescribable charm. The flowers are in terminal clusters, richly filled; lesser clusters springing from the axils of the last few leaves and joining with the topmost one to form a gracefully drooping head. The lurid colouring of the young leaves is recalled in the flower-stems and calix, and enhances the colour effect of the whole. The flower of the common Dog-tooth Violet is over, but the leaves have grown larger and handsomer. They look as if, originally of a purplish-red colour, some liquid had been dropped on them, making confluent pools of pale green, lightest at the centre of the drop. The noblest plant of the same family (Erythronium giganteum) is now in flower—a striking and beautiful wood plant, with turn-cap shaped flowers of palest straw-colour, almost white, and large leaves, whose markings are not drop-like as in the more familiar kind, but are arranged in a regular sequence of bold splashings, reminding one of a Maranta. The flowers, single or in pairs, rise on stems a foot or fifteen inches high; the throat is beautifully marked with flames of rich bay on a yellow ground, and the handsome group of golden-anthered stamens and silvery pistil make up a flower of singular beauty and refinement. That valuable Indian Primrose, P. denticulata, is another fine plant for the cool edge or shady hollows of woodland in rather good, deep soil.
But the glory of the copse just now consists in the great stretches of Daffodils. Through the wood run shallow, parallel hollows, the lowest part of each depression some nine paces apart. Local tradition says they are the remains of old pack-horse roads; they occur frequently in the forest-like heathery uplands of our poor-soiled, sandy land, running, for the most part, three or four together, almost evenly side by side. The old people account for this by saying that when one track became too much worn another was taken by its side. Where these pass through the birch copse the Daffodils have been planted in the shallow hollows of the old ways, in spaces of some three yards broad by thirty or forty yards long—one kind at a time. Two of such tracks, planted with Narcissus princeps and N. Horsfieldi, are now waving rivers of bloom, in many lights and accidents of cloud and sunshine full of pictorial effect. The planting of Daffodils in this part of the copse is much better than in any other portions where there were no guiding track-ways, and where they were planted in haphazard sprinklings.
Daffodils in the Copse.
The Grape Hyacinths are now in full bloom. It is well to avoid the common one (Muscari racemosum), at any rate in light soils, where it becomes a troublesome weed. One of the best is M. conicum; this, with the upright-leaved M. botryoides, and its white variety, are the best for general use, but the Plume Hyacinth, which flowers later, should have a place. Ornithogalum nutans is another of the bulbous plants that, though beautiful in flower, becomes so pestilent a weed that it is best excluded.
Where and how the early flowering bulbs had best be planted is a question of some difficulty. Perhaps the mixed border, where they are most usually put, is the worst place of all, for when in flower they only show as forlorn little patches of bloom rather far apart, and when their leaves die down, leaving their places looking empty, the ruthless spade or trowel stabs into them when it is desired to fill the space with some other plant. Moreover, when the border is manured and partly dug in the autumn, it is difficult to avoid digging up the bulbs just when they are in full root-growth. Probably the best plan is to devote a good space of cool bank to small bulbs and hardy ferns, planting the ferns in such groups as will leave good spaces for the bulbs; then as their leaves are going the fern fronds are developing and will cover the whole space. Another way is to have them among any groups of newly planted small shrubs, to be left there for spring blooming until the shrubs have covered their allotted space.
Many flowering shrubs are in beauty. Andromeda floribunda still holds its persistent bloom that has endured for nearly two months. The thick, drooping, tassel-like bunches of bloom of Andromeda japonica are just going over. Magnolia stellata, a compact bush some five feet high and wide, is white with the multitude of its starry flowers; individually they look half double, having fourteen to sixteen petals. Forsythia suspensa, with its graceful habit and tender yellow flower, is a much better shrub than F. viridissima, though, strangely enough, that is the one most commonly planted. Corchorus, with its bright-yellow balls, the fine old rosy Ribes, the Japan Quinces and their salmon-coloured relative Pyrus Mauleii, Spiræa Thunbergi, with its neat habit and myriads of tiny flowers, these make frequent points of beauty and interest.
In the rock-garden, Cardamine trifoliata and Hutchinsia alpina are conspicuous from their pure white flowers and neat habit; both have leaves of darkest green, as if the better to show off the bloom. Ranunculus montanus fringes the cool base of a large stone; its whole height not over three inches, though its bright-yellow flowers are larger than field buttercups. The surface of the petals is curiously brilliant, glistening and flashing like glass. Corydalis capnoides is a charming rock-plant, with flowers of palest sulphur colour, one of the neatest and most graceful of its family.
Magnolia stellata.