SAXIFRAGA. 



of yellow flower in earliest spring on stems of 2 or 3 inches are never 

 to be despised, come they under never so many vainly-multiplied 

 nam.-. This section of the Kabschias, too, thrives and spreads like 

 couch-grass in any good open loam in the sun. 



S. AUionii is a quite minute white-flowered Mossy about 2 inches 

 high, from a carpet-like minute moss indeed ; for the choicer damp cool 

 a of tin- open rock-work or damp gritty moraine-bed. 



S. altissima. — This is a most noble Euaeizoon which is hardly ever 

 seen in gardens that abound in plants of not half as much merit. It 

 forms clumps of particularly handsome wide rosettes, the leaves being 

 very long and very narrow and always recurving outwards, of leathern 

 blue-grey, margined with silver-beaded teeth that, as in S. aeizoon, 

 are always sharp and pointed upwards along the leaf, instead of being 

 rounded and scalloped as in S. Hostii. But the reddish and notably 

 glandular stems are half a yard high, branching into pyramids of 

 blossom almost as ample as in 8. Cotyledon; while the flowers do no 

 disgrace to the comparison, for while they have rather the creamy 

 note of the Aeizoons than the flagrant whiteness of the Lingulatas 

 and Cotyledons, they are also fuller-faced than in many forms of either, 

 and hi all but the best ; and at the base of the petals are freckled with 

 red. It is a splendidly hearty grower, and comes from the lower 

 regions of Upper Styria, where it is widely spread and common. 



S. x ii is a hybrid between, as it seems, 8. aeizoon and 8. 



umbrosa. The narrowly spoon-shaped leaves are set with countless 

 little teeth which give them a distinct effect, and the flowers are 

 little stars of pink, freckled with purple, and borne in loose branching 

 showers of about 6 inches high. A perfectly easy thing to grow. 



8. androsacea. — A difficult but rather beautiful species of the highest 

 damp places of the alpine peaty stream-sides and soaked edges of the 

 snowdrifts. It wants the same peat, the same pervading humidity 

 in England, and is easily established in the underground-watered 

 moraine-bed. It makes humbled, flat-squashed matted clumps of 

 narrow-obk.ng leaves (that perhaps have a tooth or so towards the t ip), 

 of a greyish pale-green, and fringed with long hair; from tho rosettes 

 rise densely glandular-hairy stems of a couple of inches or so, canying 

 from one to three flowers, enclosed in a rather large glandular cap 

 that seems to give a blunted look to the oval-petalled milk-white 

 blooms, that yet have a strange meek charm of modest and circum- 

 scribed purity, dulled and sad, yet serene, against the groundwork 

 of the sere and sodden brown earth from which they spring. 



8* aphylla is another high-alpine Mossy, but this time from the 

 limestone ranges. It wants the same conditions as the last, and is 



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