SAXIFRAGA. 



they tarry many more flowers — sometimes as many as a dozen to the 

 one stalk — and these are of a clearer whito. From the Mourne Moun- 

 tains. And yet other forms among many that may be named, but of 

 importance, are S. hyp. degans, S. hyp. elongella, S. hyp. leptc- 

 phyUa, 8. hyp. lanceolate, 8. hyp. "planifolia" S. hyp. pubescens, S. 

 hyp. recurva, 8. hyp. ternaki, S. hyp. arranensis, and S. hyp. atrovirens. 



S. imbricata. — This is a lovely little Himalayan Kabschia, in habit 

 and in needs exactly following the high Aretian Androsaees. It makes 

 tiny tight domes, with compressed columns of minute packed erect 

 1 aves, lit . ; oed in a facet at the end with a single lime-pit. All over 

 the cushion, nestling into the onds of the shoots, sit stemless white 

 blossoms among the leaves. In cultivation it is grievously rare, but 

 much less difficult to grow than the Androsace helvetica it mimics, in 

 that it is endangered by neither fluff nor down, so that perfectly-drained 

 and sheltered crevices or moraines should readily servo its needs. 



S. incruatata is the correct prior form of the name S. " crustata," so 

 commonly in use in gardens, and so often made to be, hko Cerberus, 

 three gentlemen with one name, by the additional title of S. << cristata." 

 S. incrustata tends to replace S. aeizoon in the limestones of the Eastern 

 Alps, where it has all the abundance of the other on tho Western 

 granites ; it is chiefly on granitic and volcanic outcrops that S. aeizoon 

 appears in the Eastern ranges, but S. incrustata will not be found except 

 on the calcareous. Hero and there, indeed, they nearly meet, but it is odd 

 how, in the Dolomites at least, 8. aeizoon (if it ventures on the limestone 

 at all), usually does so at higher levels than S. incrustata, holding, for 

 instance, the Fedaja Pass against S. incrustata lower down in the valley 

 of the Penia. S. incrustata varies in size, but is always most beautiful 

 in its splayed-out narrow foliage of darkest blue-green gloss with a 

 brilliant beading of silver at their edge. In no form could it ever be 

 mistaken for any variety of S. lingulata (catalogues often emit it as 

 8. I. australis), not only because the narrow leaves have no widening 

 towards tho tip, but also because the spike is not graceful and one- 

 sided, but stocky and branched exactly as in S. aeizoon, and studded 

 with flowers that are not loose and snowy as in the Lingulatas, but of a. 

 fat shape and a dingy creamy-white even uglier than anything in 

 S. aeizoon, unless it be tho very worst forms. In the garden it is as 

 as the other, but valuable for the different effect of the tightly- 

 recurving narrow dark foliage (with its remarkable pearled hem of 

 silver) packed into dense and flattened rosettes. It freely inter- 

 breeds, but all its seedlings, though they havo more or loss of the 

 lovely clump, also havo rather moro than less of the stodgy and un- 

 attractive blossom. 



284 



