SAXIFRAGA. 



the highway-sides, in lucent cushions like church-hassocks on every 

 ledge, whitened with the dust of the motors, and in the summer 

 flagging and flopping — even those undamageable impermeable leaves — 

 beneath the awful heats of summer in the lowland South. It is 

 always superb, but should be sought out in flower, that the best 

 varieties be chosen. Some of these bear names already ; such is the 

 stocky and rod-stemmed S. c. montafoniensis ; and 8. pyramidalis of 

 gardens is simply another, perhaps of especially splendid port and 

 wide pyramidal towers of blossom. The finest of all is the superb 

 8. c. islandica from the far North, which has enormous rosettes often 

 more than a foot across, of very long narrow strap-shaped foliage in 

 tones of iron and bronze ; with the most amazing spike to match, 

 of 4 or 5 feet, bowed with the drifted soft glory of their snow. 

 Unfortunately it does not seem a ready grower everywhere, though on 

 the oolitic limestone of the garden at St. John's at Oxford (whence 

 it first broko forth upon a dazzled world) it thrives or throve with all 

 its might, a thing that would be more strange than it is, in a species so 

 passionately calcifuge as 8. Cotyledon, were it not that in the garden, 

 so long as it has light and air and sun, it does not seem possible to 

 find a soil or a treatment that will disagree with it. Yet 8. Cotyledon 

 is, with 8. jlorulenta, the one Euaeizoon that in nature is absolutely 

 faithful, in the Alps at all events, to the dark granites towards the 

 Italian slope. But in the garden it revels in any rich and heavy limy 

 loam, between the most melting of calcareous rocks ; showing, in 

 fact, the same genial lack of faddishness that distinguishes the no 

 less naturally calcifuge 8. aeizoon, which, however, foreshadows its 

 willingness of temper by overflowing also in the Alps on to limestone, 

 in a manner not favoured by S. Cotyledon. This species has also given 

 us its influence in many a hybrid, named and unnamed ; so that there 

 are few gardens long established that have not some special Saxifrages 

 that owe part of their blood and nobleness to S. Cotyledon (Miss King's 

 is one of particular freedom and beauty of rosette, and so is S. x 

 Launcestonensis) ; even if their owners have not been buying other 

 forms, not necessarily better, under fancy names. In especial, the thing 

 that bears the ridiculous name of 8. nepalensis is probably a hybrid 

 of 8. Cotyledon and 8. Hostii, while all the innumerable forms called 

 8. Macnabiana have more or less of 8. Cotyledon in their nature, no 

 matter who the other parent may have been — or parents indeed, seeing 

 that the family is indefinitely fertile, so that there is no use in final 

 definitions among the later generations. 



S. crassifolia is a big Bergenia, with Elephant 's-ear smooth foliage, 

 and pink flowers standing erect when open, each on a bald and Jiairless 



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