well-known and useful plant, but of no particular value for ornamental
purposes. It is of shrubby growth, with narrow-lanceolate, hoary leaves,
and terminal spikes of blue flowers.


LAVATERA.

LAVATERA ARBOREA.--Tree Mallow. Coasts of Europe, (Britain). A
stout-growing shrub reaching in favourable situations a height of fully
6 feet, with broadly orbicular leaves placed on long stalks. The flowers
are plentiful and showy, of a pale purplish-red colour, and collected
into clusters. It is a seaside shrub succeeding best in sheltered
maritime recesses, and when in full flower is one of the most ornamental
of our native plants. There is also a beautiful variegated garden form,
L. a. variegata.


LEDUM.

LEDUM LATIFOLIUM (_syn L. groenlandicum_).--Wild Rosemary, or Labrador
Tea. This is a small shrub, reaching to about 3 feet in height,
indigenous to swampy ground in Canada, Greenland, and over a large area
of the colder parts of America. Leaves oval or oblong, and plentifully
produced all over the plant. Flowers pure white, or slightly tinted with
pink, produced in terminal corymbs, and usually at their best in April.
A perfectly hardy, neat-growing, and abundantly-flowered shrub, but one
that, somehow, has gone greatly out of favour in this country. This
plant has been sub-divided into several varieties, that are, perhaps,
distinct enough to render them worthy of attention. They are L.
latifolium globosum, with white flowers, borne in globose heads, on the