SAXIFRAGA. 



the Baths of Valdieri than on the gaunt heights ascending to the 

 Ciriegia and the Finestra passes. The type-plant makes no spreading 

 mat, but from the crown of a woody root expands into a number of 

 ample rosettes, made up of large and specially succulent fleshy-green 

 leaves, short -stalked, more or less aromatic and sticky. These leaves 

 are tri-cleft, but the lobes are all cloven again and then again, so that 

 the effect is of a many-segmented and fatly rounded fan-shape. The 

 flower-stems are leafy and branching, with quantities of largo and rather 

 cupped snow-white blossoms in branching sprays on delicate foot-stalks. 

 Care should be taken with the plant in cultivation ; all Mossies that 

 do not form massed roots, but emit more and more rosettes from a 

 woody single tap, are apt to be sensitive about excessive moisture in 

 winter, especially when plump in texture and glandular in surface. 

 Therefore they all, and particularly 8. pedemontana, should be estab- 

 lished in such a well-drained crevice (sun or shade, peat or lime, seem 

 matters of indifference) as may let their stout trunk go wandering 

 deep and far, while the clumped mats of their accumulating rosettes 

 flop out in widening piles upon the rock behind which it roots. The 

 species ranges from the Maritimes to the Balkans, and takes many 

 forms, some of which have been recognised, and others of which are 

 often advertised, as true species. Such are : 



8. p. Baldaccii, which is 8. p. genuina — that is to say, the nearest 

 typical representation on earth of the abstract Platonic idea called 

 8. pedemontana. This is the prevalent form in the Maritime Alps. 



8. p. cervicornis is another close cushion, but here the lower leaves 

 are less fat and ample ; they are profoundly cut into much narrower 

 jags that stand widely apart, and give the plant a wholly different effect. 

 This form is especially aromatic, less sticky than the type, and more 

 hairy, especially at the edges of the leaves. It lives high up in Corsica 

 and resolutely avoids the limestone. 



S. p. cerv. pulvinaris is a compressed high-alpine variety of the last, 

 and lives upon its own decay, forming very dense domes and masses 

 on the Corsican summits, rooting into the dead and rotten packed 

 cushion of its underlying leafage, the rosettes of the current year 

 being small and tight in the foliage, fat and minute and lobod in tiny 

 notches — one stout one in the middle and two stout little cloven ones 

 on either side. 



8. p. cymosa has often been hailed as a species, and occupies a far 

 away stretch of territory, from the Banat to the Balkans. Its habit 

 is quite distinct from that of the type, being much smaller and 

 tighter, and the leafage all densely clothed in long hairs, with short 

 stems carrying a much closer cluster of smaller and most delicate- 



303 



