Alpine Wallflower

ALPINE WALLFLOWER, Cheiranthus Alpinu

IN the First Series the common wallflower is described under its generally accepted name of Cheiranthus cheiri. The plant before us bears a name which indicates its close relationship to the wallflower proper, and it is also known as Erysimum ochroleucum, which connects it with the common treacle mustard and other four-parted yellow flowering plants of like character. The true wallflower is of universal use in gardens, its sturdy growth, brilliant colours, and fresh spicy fragrance insuring for it general acceptance as one of the most delightful products of spring. The so-called Alpine wallflowers are not of universal use; but, on the other hand, they have some special claims on our regard as valuable adornments of the rockery and the choice border.

The Alpine wallflower (E. ochroleucum) forms a neat leafy bush, nine to twelve inches high, adorned in spring with a fine head of sulphur or pale lemon-coloured flowers. Like the garden wallflower, it is well adapted for planting on walls and ruins, but unlike the more fragrant plant, it is not adapted for the common border, by reason of its susceptibility to winter damp. It is as hardy as any plant of its class, and therefore frost will but rarely harm it, provided it is on a dry soil, and has not become over-luxuriant through good living. It is a point of great importance for the amateur grower of Alpines to bear in mind that the promotion of a free succulent growth is altogether undersirable in the case of all such plants; many of them require an abundance of moisture in their growing season, but a rich soil and a position removed from the free atmosphere and the full play of the daylight are, generally speaking, directly injurious, both as rendering the plants less hardy than is their nature, and also less disposed to flower freely. We often have to recommend a deep nourishing loam or peat for Alpine plants, but it may be observed that we never recommend the use of stimulating manures or soils that are naturally damp and heavy. The mountain flora comprises plants that vary immensely in affinities and requirements; some are at home on the dry, starving rocky bluff, where there is scarcely a particle of such stuff as we call "mould;" others haunt the crowded bog, where the plants form a dense wet mat, and subsist on the black earth that results from the ever-accumulating decay of those that have lived their season or have been stifled by the strong usurpers. But a large proportion of the most beautiful Alpine plants have their roots in deep beds of decayed stone, containing always some amount of moisture, but often in the summer being saturated with water, owing to the melting of ice and snow on the peaks above them. Those beauties that are so much prized in our gardens will generally thrive on the rockery where the soil consists of sandy loam, with some proportion of calcareous matter, and the drainage is sufficiently perfect to insure that there shall be no lodgment of water in the winter season. As for the Erysimums, a poor soil and full exposure are the chief requisites.