POTEXTILLA. 



P. alba, a valuable species with large grey spreading tufts, like 

 those of a glorified silwry-smooth P. F ragaria-strum : and pleasant 

 showers of white small blossoms all the summer, more or less hovering 

 among the leave?. A pretty and useful rambling plant developing 

 into a wide mass, but never a weed. 



P. alchemilloeides is like an Alchemilla alpina, as its name justly 

 tells us, but glorified beyond all recognition, with finely- fingered and 

 long-stalked foliage, silky all over, and sheening white below, from 

 which come spraying far above the foliage gracious stems of 6 inches 

 or a foot, with diverging clusters of large and in a long succession 

 through the summer lovely pure-white flowers about an inch and a 

 half across. It belongs solely to limestone cliffs and screes of the 

 central and Western Pyrenees, on both sides of the range, and is 

 a species of special beauty and value : and easy of culture in the 

 sunny rock-garden. 



P. alpestris brings us into a confused land. This is a most handsome 

 thing, too, and common in the alpine pastures — more or less low- 

 lying, with showers of very large golden-yellow flowers, usually with an 

 orange blotching at the base. Its false names are P. salisburgensis, 

 H enkel ; and P. maculata, Pourr ; or P. aurea, Sm. (not Linnaeus, q.v.). 

 But it may be no more than a luxuriant and splendid mountain form 

 of our own P. verna. (It is also found in Teesdale.) But from all 

 forms of P. verna it may be known by its greater size and brilliancy, 

 alike of growth and of blossom ; while from P. aurea, L., it can easily 

 be distinguished by having a number of five-fingered stalked leaves in 

 a basal rosette or tuft, while P. aurea has but a pair (or none at all at 

 flower-time), and those glossy, while the leaves of P. alpestris are always 

 quite dull on their surfaces. It is of the easiest culture in light open soil 

 in full sun, where it produces a prostrate profusion of its wide golden 

 bloom in loose showers from midsummer far on into the season. 



P. ambigua is a iruly precious Indian species that runs freely about, 

 and yet never makes itself a nuisance, with its tufts of greyish-green 

 haves and big golden suns on stems of an inch or two all through 

 the season, produced in profusion in any open and reasonable place, 

 where the neat little rambling runner may have ungrudged room to 

 wander. 



P. anserina. — Xo, no, no. Though many a new Chinese weed at 



■.-and-six lias flowers far less beautiful than those of the common 



Goose-weed, to say nothing of its plumed silvery leaves and its extra- 



nutr.th us tubei . a delicate as new potatoes, when washed and 



P. apennina is a very choice rock-tuffct, with sprays of golden 



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