SAXIFRAGA. 



a deepening and ever-deepening column of dead foliage from bygone 

 seasons, carrying the current rosette at the end, until at last the 

 tuft has strength to flower, or else dies fruitless on its ledge, and there 

 hangs black and stark until the winds of winter dislodge the corpse, 

 and it drifts down on to the snow -fields far below, there to roll desolately 

 to and fro, like some draggled tuft of a black poodle's tail. In happier 

 circumstances, however, it is not slow to flower, but hurries rapidly 

 to its end ; among many thousands of spikes I have never seen one 

 sent up from an aged and unsuccessful plant. It is always in rich 

 chinks that the royal rosette grows wider and wider, and spinier and 

 spinier from year to year, forming a solid imbricated thorny disk of 

 darkness in the austere precipice, of effect more tremendous than in any 

 other of its race. And then, if happy, the saucer of rich green spines 

 flattens out about the fourth or fifth year, and up rises the stout, 

 leafy, and densely-glandular flower-spike, herald of the end. Late in 

 the summer it unfolds — a grand stiff fox-brush after the style of S. 

 longifolia, of rose-purple bells emerging from large and glandular 

 sticky calyces. The spike then sets seed, scatters it broadcast, and 

 dies. In the garden two points are to be remembered. The first is 

 the rosette's absolute and unvarying insistence on a horizontal position. 

 No cat hates moisture so much ; it will never be seen happy except 

 wedged tight into the crannies of an impenetrable sheer granite preci- 

 pice, or perhaps huddled under stones in some silt-bed into which it 

 has seeded down, but where it will not long survive unless it can grow 

 on its side, sheltered by rocks, with the incurving leaves shielding 

 its heart from moisture. If this is remembered the plant is not by 

 any means difficult to grow, in any very richly-soiled rain-shielded 

 crevice, whether calcareous or no. But it requires the most careful 

 handling. Like many other offensive spiky people, S. florulenta is 

 extraordinarily sensitive on its own account. Its leaves are as hard 

 and spiny as a Juniper's, glittering, impenetrable, pitiless ; yet if 

 you bruise a leaf, break a leaf, crush a leaf, they show a delicacy like 

 the Camellia's — blacken and flag and die, with the whole crown following 

 in their train. So much is this the case that you can always tell the 

 health of your specimen from its foliage; if the disk is glossy and stiff and 

 firm and brilliantly-green, then all is well ; the moment ill-health sets 

 in you will see the gloss die into pallor, the stiffness fail, and all the 

 rosette go limp and towzled and dull. If, however, your treasure suc- 

 cessfully survives, your reward, even so, is not yet. Though in nature 

 it either hangs fire till the centuries go grey, or else (if it can have its 

 way) hurries quickly to its end, in the garden there is no doubt that 

 it earns its name handsomely by the heart-rending slowness with which 



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