SAXIFRAGA. 



8. muscoeides, All., is a distinct little high-alpine Mossy, forming 

 tight domes of narrow succulent bright-green leaves, quite entire and 

 uncloven, which die grey at the tip and brown at the base when they 

 wither on the packed columns. The undivided fleshy-green linear 

 leaves reveal its identity at once beyond all possibility of doubt. 

 The stems are slender, 2 inches high or so, thrown up in rich profusion, 

 and carrying two or three stars of soft white. It may be seen in 

 every alpine chain from the Pyrenees to the Balkans ; and may easily 

 be grown in the underground -watered moraine-bed. 8. planifolia 

 is a synonym, the name having been applied to what is only a small 

 stunted form of the species ; and so is 8. tenera. There is also a variety 

 with yellow petals, distinguished as S. m. citrina. 



8. mutata stands alone in the race, a species like no other, which 

 has borrowed the rosettes of 8. Cotyledon, and on Cotyledon's spike 

 has scantily arranged a shower of blossoms stolen from 8. aeizoeides. 

 It is a child of the limestone in the Southern Alps, often seen in silty 

 and shady moist places ; but then, again, no less happy in the open 

 sunny fine calcareous screes, as on the Southern slopes of the Cima 

 Tombea, by the Bocca Lorina. The rosettes are most distinct ; for 

 though they have the size and the general shape of the leaf as you see 

 it in 8. Cotyledon, here the foliage is shorter, more condensed, stiffer, 

 in a more regular and overlapping design, and of a quite characteristic 

 dark and dull grey-green tone, with a suggestion of gloss (that gives 

 it at once the look of a shade-loving plant), and round the edge a fine 

 lacerated fringe of membrane. And shade-loving it certainly is in 

 the garden — thriving heartily in moist, cool, and umbrageous corners 

 of the rock-work, where it nobly fills a crevice with its sombre expanded 

 starfishes of foliage. Very rarely in the garden, though, does it form 

 more than one crown ; which is inconvenient, as after flowering the 

 plant seeds and dies as surely as 8. longifolia and 8. florulenta (though 

 tufted specimens are also found of both these, but most exceptionally). 

 In nature, however, it often makes masses of seven or eight rosettes, 

 from which the foot-high spires of squinny long-rayed orange stars are 

 sent up, perhaps, from two or three, leaving hope that though each 

 flowering rosette will surely die, the cushion may perhaps continue. It 

 is not surprising that this strange species has proved a parent both ways 

 with S. aeizoeides, whose flowers it has borrowed (see under 8. X Hauss- 

 mannii). If it would do as much with S. Cotyledon, to whom it is 

 equally in debt for its foliage, we should be on our way to a fine 

 pyramid-Saxifrage with golden or lemony flowers. 



S. neglecta may continue to justify its name. It stands near 

 S. stellaris. 



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