PYXIDANTHERA BARBULATA. 



and the fir-roots in the alpine woods, and very rarely in North England 

 < otland, studding the needled ground or the wide emerald sponge 

 with flat rosettes of round-toothed leathern leaves in a pale-yellow 

 shade of green, nursing next year's bud at their heart, or sending up 

 the single 3-inch stems from which hangs a single enormous star of 

 dense and waxen creamy -white, crystalline and pure in texture as 

 blended ivory and snow, haunting the whole wood with a scent of 

 orange-blossom so poignant in its deliciousness as to be almost a 

 pain to remember. This delicate loveliness is terribly hard to collect, 

 and when got, by no means easy to grow. In nine cases out of ten, 

 it will be found running underground with threads as fine as cotton, 

 never arriving at any root at all. and quite useless to collect. It 

 should accordingly be looked for in unusual places ; as, for instance, 

 beside a woodland path near the Mont Cenis, where it is growing in 

 moist grey silt of the gutter, and there, not called on to meander far 

 and wide before it roots, forms compact balls of dense fibre like a 

 mass of clumped Lobelia seedlings. These, then, do really offer 

 hope, and should be given a shaded place in light , rich, gritty sand or 

 soil, with water flowing underneath in summer. Or else they might be 

 inserted in the woods, beneath the pine-trees in the mossy masses, 

 there to niak<:- themselves at home. 



Pyxidanthera barbulata. — See under Diapensia. 



R 



Raillardella Pringlei makes a good companion to Ptero- 

 cephalns, a creeping American Composite, with linear leaves and 



as of a foot or more, each earning a head of orange-coloured 

 Scabious in summer. 



Ramondia Heldreichii = Jankaea Heldreichii, q.v. 



B. NataHae is, to some thinking, by far the finest of the 

 Ramondias. It makes much neater rosettes, with flatter and more 

 overlapping leaves than R. pyrenuica, of oval foliage more corrugated 

 than crinkled, and not dull and dusty, but of brilliant glossy green 

 with a dense fringe of dark hairs. The flower-stems are more numer- 

 ous, and the flowers in a much clearer, brighter tone of lavender-blue, 

 with the usual eye of golden orange, but only four lobes to the crown. 

 A well-flowered clump of this, staring glossily from some rich-soiled 

 ahadj - (in which every Ramondia is as happ}" as 



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