TALBOT1309

Florence

Sept. 10. ¹

My dear Henry

I hope you were pleased with the part of England you have been touring in I thing <sic> the Melissa you found must be the Lemon Mint of the gardens – or what I take to be a variety of the Calaminta with rather larger flowers than it usually has on the continent, & which I found in the autumn near Bath – has yours the scent of M. Grandiflora which I found on the Apennines I have been a good deal in the country lately in the Valdarno which is very pretty as you know but the flowers are over except Inula viscosa which I wonder at never seeing in our gardens – next Spring I will go there again & ascend some of the mountains which would be interesting at that time – Most of the mountains of Tuscany have grass meadows on the top concealed behind a front of rocks or steep rocky ground clothed with wood – those meadows may contain just as much as the Prato Fiorito – perhaps more – I was not lucky enough to find Gentiana utriculata the most lovely of Ge<ntians.> ²

There are no rivers in the Crimea – that is one of its imperfections – do you remember where the Corniche road makes a sort of semicircle under a wall of huge rocks above Monaco? if the sloping ground down to the sea was wooded, with starting rocks & gushing torrents it would be like the undercliff part of the coast of the Crimea ³ – But it is too naked & barren – I never saw anything like the coup dœil ⁴ on coming out of the wood at the top of the <Merdven?> or rock staircase the descent by it to the Corniche of that place thro a fissure so perpendicular & so narrow that when you emerge from it at the foot of the rocks you may look back & not know where you came from the change of scenery is so great it is like falling from the skies into another land. It is worth going there to see. I would rather have the month of May to ramble about there than revisit any place I ever saw – I know I did not see a quarter of it – Botany, Geology, landscape, people languages, antiquities, climate, all are interesting & to a certain degree, in the Steppe part as well as in the mountains & along the coast. tell me when you will go.

Lilium croceum is Garden orange Lily sine bulbis. Sedum heptapetalum is in the gardens here I have seeds of it – but cæruleum must be handsomer from the description – In the garden here is a Verbena triphylla menthodora. I think the Campanula latifolia as I had the good fortune to come upon it unawares in a wood near Petersburg one of the most striking plants I ever found wild – the flowers were all milkwhite with a purple eye round the stamens. C. Persicifolia when very large is a very fine plant. They do not know here C. patula can you send me some seeds of it? I hope you will be in Dorsetshire in time to see C. lactiflora & fragilis.

I think Scabiosa transylvanica very pretty it grows abundantly in the country between Siena & Valdarno with S. Leucantha & orientalis it forms a division approaching to Dipsacus with its rigid paleæ. What an <odd> plant Atraphaxis speciosa is. Do you know Statice spatulata, bellidifolia, & monopetala? They are very pretty – I have a new idea about Linums I think L. angustifolium is only a dwarf variety of L. Narbonens<is>

Y^r afft^e

W T H F S

What are the present spots in the Sun I wish you would pay M^r Lambert ⁵ a visit if you go into Wiltshire he would be delighted to shew you Bruces original drawings ⁶ which he is I am happy to hear, thinking of publishing – the whole place is odd –Pray look for Arabis stricta while you are at Clifton & see if it is not the same as Tenores ⁷ A. collina – & go to Cheddar & see if D. cæsius ⁸ is not only a variety of D. alpinum & what is the moss saxifrage that grows there which seems different from what you see in gardens. Did I tell you I wrote to you about O. pyramidale ⁹ & you answered about O. pyrenaicum

Henry Talbot Esq^r
31 Sackville Street
4 Mall Buildings, ¹⁰
Clifton,
Bristol.