SAXIFRAGA. 



S. marginata. The reddish flower-stems are abundant, some 3 inches 

 high, carrying four or five large and vase-shaped open flowers, like 

 those of S. marginata, made even yet larger and more brilliant in their 

 pure whiteness by the influence of S. Burseriana. It is a splendidly 

 free grower, and of the easiest cultivation, spreading rapidly into wide 

 masses. 



S. sancta stands as one of the most valuable of the furnishing 

 Kabschias, and brings joy to the heart all the year round with its 

 wide carpeting masses of serried green and hearty leaves, short 

 and strap-shaped and spine-pointed, with pitted broad edges of 

 silver beading ; no less than in the early year when these are obscured 

 by innumerable solid stems of 2 or 3 inches (which afterwards elongate 

 and go red), carrying loose trusses of smooth and hairless-calyxed 

 flowers, each on a distinct pedicel, with bright -yellow oval three- 

 nerved petals as long or longer than the broad, blunt, and yellow-green 

 segments of the calyx that afterwards go red like all the stem. In 

 gardens this most useful and pleasant plant thrives with the utmost 

 ease and permanence in any decent soil and open place. It belongs 

 to Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, and may be seen in the damp 

 marble rocks at the summit of Athos. Sometimes an inferior species 

 is sent out as S. sancta ; this is S. pseudo-sancta, q.v., which belongs to 

 the highest shady rocks, wet from the melting snows, in the mountain 

 region of the Balkans. This has less brilliant blossoms, with spidery 

 stamens and not so much else, protruding from baggy and very gland- 

 ular calyces, and arranged in a short little huddled spike instead of 

 in a loose distinct -pedicelled head. The leaves also are narrower and 

 more keeled, and the whole mass approaches much more in dowdiness 

 and darkness and uncertainty of tenure to S. juniperifolia. 



S. sarmentosa is another greenhouse Diptera Saxifrage, also called 

 Mother of Thousands, with showers of uneven-petalled pink and white 

 flowers, hairy round leaves, fleshy and variegated and stalked, and 

 innumerable long red runners at the end of which fresh tufts develop, 

 so that the plant spreads without pity wherever established. 



S. scardica is represented by every sort of impostor in the garden, 

 where the true species is as rare as it would be valuable. The usual 

 impostor that goes out in its stead is a small form of S. marginata, but 

 it is sometimes also impersonated by S. X Salomoni. The real S. s?ardica 

 is a most beautiful and distinct Kabschia, standing nearest in the race to 

 S. Vandettii, but about twice the size in all its parts, with masses of 

 rosettes built of small tight sharply-pointed and splayed-out leaves, 

 of special spinincss though rather broad, bluey-grey, and rough with 

 little teeth at the base, and a thick marginal pitting of lime-pits all 



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