SAXIFRAGA. 



hardly worth thern, being a minute cushion of tri-cleft blunt foliage, 

 from which rise many bare stems of an inch, carrying each a single 

 starved yellow star of very narrow-pointed petals, making no effect 

 against the ampler calyx-segments expanding in an alternate star 

 between them. The specially narrow and pointed petals have also earned 

 it the name of S. stenopetala, and will always be found its certain 

 diagnostic on the Alps, no less than the perfectly naked little stems. 



8. x apiculata is the oldest of the hybrids in the Kabschia group, 

 and still remains perhaps the best of the early-flowering Saxifrages, in 

 any fair place making wide lawns of evergreen glossy bright-coloured 

 pale-green rosettlings, packed into serried masses, and built of narrow 

 strap-shaped small leafage, flat, not keeled, with not one lime-pit only 

 at the tip (which ends in a tiny spicule), but with two more, one on 

 either side. Then in February and March up rises a profusion of 

 glandular pinkish leafy stems of 3 or 4 inches, carrying a loose head 

 of large primrose-yellow flowers, beautifully enhancing and fulfilling 

 the yellow green of the carpet from which they spring, and each stand- 

 ing on a footstalk of its own, so that the head does not have the more 

 crowded effect that you get in S. x Elizabethae. The parentage of 

 this plant is 8. sancta x 8. marginata, and it labours often under many 

 false names. 8. Malyi, 8. luteo-viridis, and 8. scardica are all names 

 to beware of in catalogues, lest they prove only to cover 8. x apiculata. 

 And akin to this may be taken a new and probably secondary hybrid, 

 now being sent out as 8. x Primrose Bee. This has more trace of 

 8. marginata, and is very beautiful, with specially large and full primrose 

 flowers in characteristically loose heads, above the same neat and 

 spreading mat of brilliant green rosettes, on the same short stems, and 

 in the same free and easy early robust habit. 



S. aquatica is a handsome large-growing and vigorous Mossy, 

 making loose lawns and masses by the high stream-sides on all forma- 

 tions in the Pyrenees (where this section is as largely represented as 

 poorly in the Alps). It is all hairy and glandular, and the lower 

 leaves are large and fleshy and thick, divided and divided and re- 

 divided into pointed strips until they have the look of some dark and 

 fat Field-buttercup's ; tho stems are from 12 inches to half a yard 

 high, leafy all the way, and freely branching into noble sprays and 

 showers and clusters of big and brilliant white flowers. Tho form 

 S. a. aprica, often sent out for 8. ajugaefolia, is smaller in all its 

 parts, with shorter inflorescence and diminished blooms. Both form 

 and typo ask for the sunny bog or waterside. (Catalogues often 

 call this 8. " petraea") 



8. arachnoidea belongs to the Ncphrophyllum group — a typical and 



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