ONOSMA. 



only yet touched the fringe, and as to which catalogues are still but 

 scantily informed and greatly confused. The chief of the family is 

 Southern and Levantine, and insists absolutely on hot exposures and 

 specially well-drained loam, quite light and usually limy. All can be 

 raised freely from foreign seed, and, in England, multiplied by cuttings. 

 The blooming-time is in summer from June forwards, and no race is 

 more noble for hot and open ledges. And, in the first place, to have 

 our ground clear of vain cumberers, the following species are of little 

 value, either on account of then* provenance, or their ugliness, or 

 their biennial habit : MM. micros permit m, gracile, molle, kiloujense, 

 Olivieri, chhrotrichum, Kotschyi, rhodopeum, Emodi, Wattichii, gigant- 

 eum, taygeteum, Sprungeri, and hebebulbum. 



0. albo-roseum has the habit of 0. fruticosum. It is a sub-shrub, 

 very dense indeed with starry down, making masses of oblong blunt 

 leaves, and sending up croziers that uncurl with sumptuous hoary- 

 velvet bugles that range from white to blood-colour and blue, with 

 notably broad lobes to the calyx. This beautiful species haunts the 

 limestone cliffs of Amasia and Eastern Cappadocia, and though often 

 well grown in gardens, is thankful for a little special warmth and 

 protection from whiter wet. It is a twin in many ways to our well- 

 known 0. tauricum. 



0. armarium, from the nearer Alps, has much the habit of 

 0. tauricum also, but with flowers of yellow. 



0. armenum is like a dwarf pale 0. tauricum, but the sprays of 

 bloom are in short heads instead of unfurling sprays. 



0. bicolor is a foot or more in height, with purple flowers. 



0. Bodeanum rises to 6 or 9 inches, with a great number of erect 

 stems, springing from tufts of pale green leaves about an inch and a 

 half long, set with hairs that rise from smooth wart lets. The stems 

 are leafy and graceful, each oarrying a few-flowered head of large 

 violet bells. (From Bachtiar in Persia.) 



0. Bourgaei grows in the alpine regions of Turkish Armenia, and its 

 stalks are about a foot high, carrying curled-up dense sprays of white 

 blossoms emerging from a fluffy oalyx, each depending on a short 

 petiole. The leaves are narrow and as long as their stems, and the 

 whole plant is softly hairy with close-pressed down . 



0. bracteatum is an Indian high-alpine, more of an Echium, with 

 steins of 15 inches or so, and dense little sprigs of yellow flower all up 

 the stout bristlish stems hi dense array. 



0. caespitosum may be seen in the impregnable cliffs of Buffavento 

 in Crete above the ruins of the Queen's Castle ; where it forms tight 

 masses of fat finely-downy foliage lying in rosettes with closely leaf} 7 



11 



