ONOSMA. 



white blossoms about half as long as the calyx, with the blue 

 stamens sticking far out. It hangs from the undercut precipices of 

 Mesopotamia, &c. 



0. Roussaei may be found in the rocks by the Cedars of Lebanon, 

 and in the chalky hills of Aleppo. It is a neat dwarf mass and very 

 like 0. armenum, but that the leaves are much longer, and the yellow 

 flower stands much further out of the calyx, in heads of blossom about 

 6 inches tall. 



0. rupestre, from the Iberian Caucasus, Tiflis, &c, and the rocks of 

 Cappadocia, is a tidy ash-grey mass of foliage with short narrowly 

 paddle-shaped leaves an inch or less in length, and stems of 4 or 6 

 inches, unbranching, or almost wholly unbranching, and hanging out 

 cylindric citron-coloured bugles. 



0. sericeum is one of the most lovely among the most lovely. It 

 makes regular rosettes of rather broad-oval leaves sheeted in quite 

 smooth pure silver of the best quality, untarnishable but by autumnal 

 rains ; from which in due course ascend stems of blossom that divide 

 near the top into two sprays each hanging out a carillon of long 

 creamy -yellow bells. This gem requires the warmest and the best- 

 drained place of all, as we may learn not only by sad experience, but 

 also from the enlightening information that in nature it especially 

 affects the dry sub-alpine stony places in Anatolia, Caucasus, 

 Transcaucasia, &c. 



0. simplicissimum. — Simple Simon shows his character by going 

 voluntarily to live in Russia and Siberia, where he makes big tuffets 

 of yellowish-green foliage, sparsely hairy, very narrow, and more or 

 less pointed and rolled at the edges. The plant is almost shrubby at 

 the base, and from the mass ascend a crowd of stems some 6 inches 

 or a foot tall, carrying heads of whitish-velvet flowers. 



0. stamineum is also a semi-Russian. It is fairly roughish, in a 

 cluster of many crowns with many uprising unbranched stems of half 

 a foot or more, beset with small sessile narrow leaves, and evolving into 

 almost cylindrical short spikes of blue flowers, with their lobes curling 

 back, and their anthers sticking out. 0. rostellatum has suggested 

 this, but here the blossoms are twice and a half again as long as the 

 calyx. 



0. stellulatum. — This is the species that has given botanists as 

 much trouble as its beauty is worth to gardeners. We may take our 

 common 0. tauricum as its complete picture, seeing that at first 

 0, tauricum was ranked as a mere variety, though now differentiated 

 as a species on small botanical grounds presently to be recounted. 

 The type, anyhow, ranges through Greece into Asia Minor, and takes 



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