SAXIFRAGA. 



group, being Southern, is much more tolerant of shady conditions 

 than the sun-loving Aeizoons. In the valleys of the Vesubie no other 

 form but S. L lantoscana is to be seen, and on the long series of lime- 

 stone wooded cliffs across the river from S. Martin it is significant to 

 watch how, even early in the morning, shadow gains the folds and gullies 

 from which most abundantly wave the glacial plumes of the Saxifrage. 

 The gardener can tell it at once, when well-developed, from any well- 

 developed form of the larger type, 8. I. Bellardii, from the Roja Valley ; 

 it forms true rosettes, much flatter and smaller, of much fatter and 

 fuller less grooved leaves, curling more at the edge, swelling to a much 

 more marked fattening at the tip, and of a wholly distinct and peculiar 

 ochreous grey-green, filmed with silver and delicately outlined rather 

 than beaded. The flower-stems are shorter, and rarely and only 

 slightly glandular, but have the same graceful and abundant furnish- 

 ing of large and snow-white blossoms most delicately borne in the long 

 full cylindric spire (about half the size of 8. I. Bellardii's best, as is 

 the whole plant), so tantalising to see when the finest plumes of all hang 

 derisively down from stark and impregnable precipices. The type, as 

 in the last, remains fixed, at least in the Vesubie district ; but, as 

 S. I. Bellardii takes a dwarf and stunted high alpine form (as a rule this 

 race has no mountaineering ambitions) on the Cima Ciavraireo, be- 

 tween Fontanalba and the Miniera de Tenda, where it approaches a 

 minute form of 8. I. lantoscana — so 8. I. lantoscana also, in an out- 

 lying district on the Sainte Baume near Marseilles (S. 8a?ictae-Balmae, 

 Shutt.) takes a small development, thin and frail and glandular-hairy. 

 On the limestones of Venanson the plant, like 8. I. Bellardii on the Col 

 de Pesio, comes into contact with S. aeizoon, in a very poor and squalid 

 little calcareous type ; the resulting hybrid has quite regular and 

 beautiful rosettes of narrow foliage, but the stems have the stiff stodgi- 

 ness, and the flowers the small size, the obese texture and the creamy 

 impurity of the worst Aeizoons, to replace the graceful bending feathers 

 of snow that are the glory of all the Lingulatas. In the garden 8. I. lan- 

 toscana is an established favourite, which for many years obliterated 

 8. I. Bellardii ; various forms have been distinguished by catalogues 

 as S. I. 1. superba, &c. ; there is one special development, however, 

 extremely ready in growth, with more upstanding fuller leaves on 

 larger and much more regular rosettes, that suggests the influence of 

 some other species, and is called either 8. 1. 1. Alberlii or 8. 1. 1, albida. 

 It has, whatever its history, rotamed the beautiful port of the type, 

 and is hardly less free with the enlarged plumes of purity that wave 

 from its greater masses in early summer. And every garden that 

 grows Saxifrages will ere long show the influence of 8. I. lantoscana 



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