OXYTROPIS. 



tremely handsome foliage like that of a dulled Atplcnium tricho manes. 

 All th< se sp< ciea have very long roots and sometimes rather short lives ; 

 they are hard to collect, and should, if possible, be raised from seed, 

 and tlun put out into the moraine, or light sunny deep soil, well filled 

 with chips; and there left alone to cover the floor with flowers in 

 summer and late summer. In the following list I mean to ignore the 

 fat-headed yellow ones, which, though sometimes clear and prettyish 

 on the alpine shingles, are not of charm sufficient to entitle them 

 to the garden, unless of a goodness quite special. 



0. Blankinshipii, or Besseyi, comes from Wyoming, where they are 

 having fun nowadays with Oxytropis, calling the whole race Aragallus, 

 just aa Italian botany now tends to merge the whole family into 

 Astragalus. In the meantime let us stick stolidly by Oxytropis, of 

 which 0. Bhinkinshipii (despite its infelicitous name) is a beautiful 

 species, being a tuft of silver-silk from which rise stems of some 4 to 

 8 inches, bearing about a dozen big purple flowers nearly an inch long 

 in a dense spike. 



0. campestris, however, shall win its way into the list, if only for 

 the favour it has done these islands in alighting on one or two lone 

 rocks of Clova and Lochnagar. That they could have done without it 

 is " dreadful true," for, " facts being stubborn and not easy drove," 

 this Oxyiropid has a fat and dowdyish long head of large dim-yellow 

 blossoms. There are, however, more worthy varieties, with white 

 Pea-flowers or blue or of clearer citron ; and one, 0. c. johannensis, 

 from America, which is of a beautiful pink and very fine. 



0. chionophila loves the snows of Alatau. It is near 0. aralensis, 

 brightly silvery-silky in the tuffet, with the blue flowers emerging from 

 calyces white with soft long down. 



0. chrysocarpa is far neater and more precious, not to be found 

 except beside the snow in the high limestone Alps of Persia, where 

 it forms neat scabs of silver, from which rise stems of 2 inches or so 

 with purple blossoms. And on the desolate rocks of remote Khorassan 

 there is a dust -grey variety of this called 0. c. hypsophila, whose love 

 of mountains is such that it hugs the highest cliffs at 9000 feet, where 

 it cannot grow more than an inch at the most. 



0. cyanea has bigger flowers than any other Levantine species, 

 and is neat and lovely, with closely hoary leaves about 3 inches long, 

 made up of many leaflets ; and eight or fifteen big violet-blue Pea- 

 flowers in a head on a 5-inch stem. 



O. dasypoda, from Eastern Caucasus and Daghestan, is quite near 

 to 0. cyanea, of which it has all the beauty but that of blueness ; for 

 the flowers are of much paler tone, verging on white. 



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