VEGETATION OF THE HITIEEA. 141 



most exposed rocks with its dense hemispherical tufts ; while the 

 Spiny Broom (Calycotorna spinosa) covers the driest and most 

 sterile tracts, where it replaces the furze of the north, and makes 

 gay the stony slopes of the hills with its bright yellow blossoms. 

 Among the negative features of special interest presented by the 

 flora of this part of the Mediterranean area is the absence of our 

 northern Furze (TJlex europceus). This plant shows itself for the 

 first time much further west ; and it is not until we approach the 

 Pyrenees that it becomes abundant. 



To the north-west of Hyeres the beautiful Syrian shrub Styrax 

 officinale has made for itself a home ; and with its white flowers, 

 recalling those of the orange, but hanging in drooping clusters 

 from the branches, adorns in May the ravines and stream-banks 

 of Mount Coudon. 



In the more eastern parts the Oleander (Neriwm, Oleander) 

 may be found occupying the narrow valleys which confine the 

 streams of water in their course from the hills above, while the 

 EupTiorhia dendroides takes possession of the rocky cliff's between 

 Nice and Ventimiglia. It is a truly ligneous species this great 

 Euphorbia ; the stem attains at its base a diameter of two or 

 three inches, and then with a regular trichotomous ramification 

 rises to the height of a man. It is the nearest European repre- 

 sentative of the gigantic Euphorbias of the Canary Islands and 

 Western Africa. "Within the limits just mentioned it is very 

 abundant, and constitutes the most characteristic vegetation of 

 the sea-cliffs ; it is conspicuous no less by the fresh tender green 

 of its foliage than by the singularity and beauty of its form. 



Widely distributed over the whole region are numerous spe- 

 cies of KeliantJiemum. Small Cistus-like shrubby or occasionally 

 herbaceous plants, of more or less prostrate growth, lovers of in- 

 tensest sunlight, they spread themselves over the hottest and most 

 stony ground, making it bright with their soft yellow flowers. 



But of all the plants which combine to throw over the rocky 

 hills of the Eiviera that richness of vegetable life which so 

 eminently belongs to them, there is perhaps not one by which we 

 are so forcibly impressed as by the true Cistuses (Cistus albidug, 

 C salvifolius, and C. monspeliensis). There is no spot too dry or 

 shadeless for these beautiful shrubs. Their season of flowering 

 is in the later spring and early summer, when they display day 

 after day in unlimited profusion their large, rose-like, white, or 

 purple flowers, and mingle the basamic odour of their leaves with 



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