PHLOX. 



Divaricatas, nor the neat and massed profusion of the Subulatas, nor 



■ ra. 



Ph. a 



Ph. ■ form of Ph. subulaia, or perhaps a hybrid 



of Ph. divarieata lata. 



Ph. a weful, creeping, ascending plant from the pine- 



woods of Pacific North America, with smooth, longish leaves in opposite 

 pairs, and clusters of white flowers at the ends of the shoots. 



Ph. austromontana must immediately be quested, from the Peach 

 Springs of North Arizona, Santa Rosa, San Bernardino, and the other 

 saints that keep guard over the loveliest, perhaps, among the Phloxes. 

 It is a downy tiling, but not glandular, making low masses of shoots, set 

 with very narrow pointed foliage, which is thickly powdered, like a 

 Christmas card or a micaceous rock, with countless glistening sparks 

 of pure silver in the sunlight, till the whole tuft glisters and twinkles 

 again. The large flowers almost sit close over this loveliness, and are 

 themselves of a glorious lavender-blue or paler, or white. And there 

 is also a perfectly flat creeping form called Ph. a. pro-strata. 



Ph. bifida is a cliff u- i if a foot high, or more or less, finely 



downy all over, and with clusters of starry pale violet blossoms, with 

 each lobe deeply cleft into two or three minor lob 



Ph. bryoexdes is the first member we come to of a section that calls 

 the water to the mouth — a group of tiny massed domes from the 

 upmost rocky ridges, where they take the place and scorn the poor 

 beauties, of the high-alpine Androsaces of the Old World (a scorn which 

 the high-alpine Androsaces requite or provoke, b}- utterly refusing to 

 ©t in America at all). Ph. bryoeides, then, is a rare plant in this 

 group ; it makes dense masses of very densely woolly foliage of packed 

 little narrow leaves arranged up the shoots in four rows, but all blurred 

 by the wool they wear ; all over the cushion are set the ample, round- 

 faced, white flowers, like blossoms of an uncloven-lobed Primula, 

 poked into a ball of fluffy moss. It need hardly be added after that 

 alarming word ■■ wool," that when we possess the high-alpine Flames, 

 they must have all the care and nicety of culture that go to make 

 success with the Aretian Androsaces ; though they will not, indeed, 

 insist on growing in rock, but will ask for a choice corner in the under- 

 ground-watered Gentian-bed or moraine ; and will certainly wish to 

 be pr rerely against excessive rains in winter. 



Ph. t is another, but less tight and perilous, of the same 



group, mall \ mate of longish shoots in effect exactly like that of 



Douglasia Vitaliana in the abundance of the little green leaves, narrow 



piny on their spravs. flat, more or less edged with membrane, 



GO 



