SAXIFRAGA. 



takes a condensed aspect, S. a. bryoeides, with the foliage less bristly, 

 smaller and shorter, and packed more closely round the gem-buds, 

 so that the briefer condensed shoots look much more like masses of 

 grey-green balls. This form makes tight and tumbled heaps, from 

 which rise shorter, sturdier, fine flower-stems, usually carrying only 

 one blossom which is larger, clearer in colour, more brilliantly freckled 

 with red and gold, and altogether a good deal moro attractive, while 

 quite as easy to grow in any open soil and conditions. (The species 

 and its variety are duplicated in America by S. bronchialis, q.v.) 



S. ailantica belongs to the Western Mediterranean region, and 

 stands in the Nephrophyllum section, closely allied to S. granulata, 

 but that it has no naked bulbils. The leaves of the basal rosette are 

 roundish and deeply scalloped or lobed, on short stalks, with bulbils 

 in their axils ; but though there are numerous leaves on the ascending 

 6- to 8-inch stems, these produce none ; the flowers are few and large 

 and fragrant, pure-white, with the central one always overtopped 

 undutifully by the laterals. It was introduced by Dammami and Co. 

 from Naples, in 1895 ; and its smaller variety, S. a. carpetana, Boiss. 

 and Reut., is the plant sometimes seen or offered under the name of 

 S. veronicaefolia, Duf., and there is a large group of similar Nephro- 

 phyllum Saxifrages awaiting cultivation or clearance, on the Alps of 

 Spam and elsewhere, that we may ultimately know the individualities 

 and claims of SS. glaucescens, arundana, Rouyana, biternata, gemmulosa 

 (a dwarf of the last), hispanica, Bourgaeana, Haenseleri, and blanca — 

 some of which will probably prove to owe their existence as species 

 rather to the beautiful and bountiful zeal of botanists than to any 

 specific merit of their own. 



S. augustana is a high-alpine Porphyrion of no special distinction, 

 and the usual exacting temper. 



S. australis, Moric. See under S. Ungulata. 



S. austrina is an improved and slenderer S. nivalis from Colorado. 



S. austromontana lives aloft on the Alps of Colorado, and is possibly 

 a dwarfer and yet more brilliant development of S. bronchialis, with 

 steme of half a foot or less, and big white stars freckled with gold and 

 purple. 



S. Baldaccii of the Maritime Alps is the precise typical form of 

 that elusive and protean species S. pedemontana, q.v. 



S. x Bertoloni, Siindermann, 1907, and 8. Biasoleltu, Siindermann, 

 1912, aro En gleri a -hybrids, of which the first is a spine-leaved plant, no 

 improvement on S. thessalica, while the second is a noble-foliaged silver- 

 rosetted combination of S. thessalica and S. Grisebachii, with leaves 

 much ampler than in the one, and much more pointed than those of the 



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