OMPHALODES. 



runs about insatiably and fills the whole place ; in cooler gardens 

 and ground it often proves impossible to keep. There is also a hybrida 

 of great merit, if indeed it be not synonymous with Oe. Arendsii, q.v. 



And there are other species frequently advertised and offered, 

 with regard to all of which the collector would be well advised not 

 only to remember the psammophilous proclivities of this sun- 

 worshipping and southerly race, but also that the family, its relation- 

 ships and differences, are all still wrapped in impenetrable mystery, so 

 that true, definite, finally-established species are not by any means 

 easy to come by in a group of plants as polymorphic as a range of 

 clouds at sundown. 



Omphaloties. — A race of Borrages, as a rule, almost excessively 

 beautiful, from common little Blue-eyed Mary to the rarest new- 

 comer from the East. Their nearest relations are Paracaryum, 

 Myosotis, Cynoglossum, and Lithospermum. All can be well raised 

 from seed, and most of them divided. 



0. cappadocica (sometimes called 0. Witmanniana, and 0. cornifolia, 

 Lehm.) makes a neat tuft of oval pointed leaves, dark above and 

 greyish-pale beneath, from which in early summer and autumn, spring 

 many very graceful loose sprays of 6 inches or so, unfurling a string 

 of lovely large Forget-me-nots, beautifully deep-blue, scattered and airy 

 in effect. This thrives quite easily in- any rich well-drained loam, in 

 rather shady exposures such as would suit 0. verna ; it is native to 

 similar shady places and copses in Lazic Pontus, Cappadocia, &c. 



. florariensis is said to be a hybrid between O.Luciliae and O.nitida, 

 from which its beauty, if not its culture, may be imagined. 



0. Ikumae is a dainty little lovely Japanese plant, fine and frail, 

 suggesting a compromise between 0. Luciliae and 0. verna. 



0. japonica is even finer, having more flowers, and greater vigour of 

 port, but otherwise suggesting the same relationship as the last. 



0. Luciliae throws down the gauntlet to gardeners. Where happy 

 it runs about and sows itself and turns a weed ; in other places, not 

 happy, it yet more promptly turns a corpse. The aim of this fairy's 

 typical need (though occasionally in some gardens it may be otherwise 

 suited), is a light yet rich loam, half filled with mortar rubble and lime- 

 chips, so arranged upon the rock- work as to have the most perfect drain- 

 age and the fullest sun, yet without being parched or parboiled. It is 

 so that the plant, a true crevice-lover, forms enormous bushy masses 

 of its lovely glaucous foliage, long and waxy-blue and smooth-oval- 

 pointed, in the sheer walls of Parnassus (above Mana Rachova), 

 Sipylus, Cadmus, and other god-haunted mountains of Asia Minor, 

 delighting those inhospitable rocks with abundant loose sprays of 



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