ONOSMA. 



certain cold salty plains of Lycaonia, beneath Kara Dagh, which in 

 winter are under water. This extreme eccentricity of taste (and 

 doubly extreme in an Onosma) does not deter it from forming tawny- 

 green rosettes of broadish, oblong leaves, round which, from below.. 

 spring up stems of 6 or 10 inches, unfurling heads of white velvet 

 blooms. It is not shrubby at the base. 



0. helvetkum stands quite close in habit to 0. arenarium. It has 

 green bristlish foliage and flowers of pale yellow, after the style of 

 O. tauricum. with which, however (vain words notwithstanding), it 

 has no specific afiinity whatever. (German Alps of the South . and 

 away to Crete through the high mountain rocks of Epiras. &c.) 



0. Hookeri is a hairy Esau from some 14.000 feet in Sikkirn. with 

 stems that vary between 3 and 6 inches or more, carrying flurry heads 

 of large violet flowers as ample in size as those of 0. echioeides. This 

 plant it is that yields the red dye of the Lepchas, and has lent itself 

 thus to the long feud between the yellow- and the Onosma -capped 

 monks of Tibet. 



0. isauricum comes so close to 0. sericeum as only to be distin- 

 guished by the stellate tubercles on the leaves. 



0. lanceolatum comes from the grassy places of Kurdistan., and is 

 all ashy-grey, the lower leaves being three-nerved on the under-side, 

 while the flower-stems are half a foot or a foot high. 



0. latifolium haunts the same quarters, but precisely follows the 

 fashion of 0. dasytrichum. except that it is herbaceous and not half- 

 shrubby, and the whole mass is vested in a thick grey coat ; while the 

 flowers are not violet, but yellow. 



0. liparoeide-s, from the mountains of Cappadocia, is a pleasant 

 little thing, as smoothly and platedly silver as 0. sericeum itself, but 

 quite neat and dwarf, with stems not more than 4 inches high or a 

 little more. The white flower hardly emerges from the calyx. 

 however, which is cut into strips so thoroughly as even to become 

 feathery. 



0. mite makes masses of soft wool, as its name declares, and the 

 masses are but 2 inches high, while the erect -lobed yellow blossoms are 

 borne in heads on stems of seven or nine. This will require cherishing, 

 as its home is in the hot pine-stretches of Lycia and Cyprus. 



0. montanum. if this be more than a superfluous form, is only 

 4 inches high, so it is said, with flowers of clear yellow. 



0. mutabile is also about 6 inches high and nobly beautiful, having 

 the general habit and stature of 0. albo-roseum, all the clump being 

 clothed in grey hairs, and the plant half-shrubby and branching. 

 But the large bell-drops pass from yellow to pink and blue, and the 



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