SAXIFRAGA. 



stones from Spain to Sicily. The distinguishing notes are the rich 



mats of large and out -curled leaves, very long and narrow, thick and 

 fat and hard and leathery, widening more or less definitely to a swelling 

 just before their tip, of deep iron-grey colour, and with a beautiful 

 edge of silver beading or filming. The flower-spikes usually hang 

 down, and have developed the habit, accordingly, of sending up all 

 their branches upwards, so that the full pendent plume tends to take 

 a one-sided effect ; and the colouring of the innumerable large flowers 

 is of a much purer white than in the forms of S. aeizoon. Indeed, if 

 their haunts and habits are thoroughly studied, it will probably be 

 found that all assumptions of relationship between the Aeizoons and 

 S. incrustata on one side, and the Lingulatas, with S. cochkaris. on the 

 other, are in reality ill-founded ; and that the truer grouping will be 

 to set the Lingulatas and S. coclilearis in one clan, the Aeizoons and 

 ,$. incrustata in another. The garden-value of the Lingulatas is supreme 

 in all their forms, all of which are often sent out as species, and all of 

 which contribute most valuable legacies to their garden hybrids, alike 

 in extra beauty of silvered leafage and in purified brilliancy of white 

 blossom. All are of the easiest culture, can be as profusely propagated 

 by cuttings, and raised from seed, as *S. aeizoon itself. The special 

 forms are : 



*S. /. australis, which is a stout and variable type of Xaples 

 and the South, with leaves of special firmness, and rather broader than 

 in the other types. The flower-spikes are tall and well-furnished with 

 sprays of purest white, either red-spotted or virgin, borne with greater 

 stiffness and elasticity than in the Lingulatas of the Maritime Alps. 

 There is an especially handsome and free-growing plant of yet larger 

 proportions and statelier port, sent out some years since as a species 

 from Sicily, which is clearly a form of 6'. /. australis. notable in the 

 fat and iron amplitude of its long and very stiff well-filled-looking 

 leaves, as in the stature and elegance of the upstanding stem that 

 carries the snow-white flowers. This, like other developments of the 

 type, seems especially happy on the cooler and shadier sides of the 

 rock-work, where it multiplies its rosettes apace. 



S. I. Bellardii is the central type of the group, and a treasure of 

 singular and rare magnificence, confined to sunny and shady exposures 

 in the Tenda district of the Maritime Alps, where it forms huge- spidery 

 cushions a yard across, and hangs in princely pennons of white from the 

 cliffs of gneiss or hmestone here and there on the very highway-side 

 between Vievola and Tenda (always almost preferring places that only 

 get half-a -day's visit, or less, from the sun). Its essential character- 

 istics for the gardener are the great length of very narrow leaf, widening 



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