^AXIFRAGA. 



(so far as there is one) it is like a more slender S. decipiens, of more 

 delicate habit, with the leaf-stem generally flat, and the leaves three- 

 cleft or five-cleft, but sometimes undivided on the long runners, and 

 with the lobes narrow, tapering and pointed, never blunt, and ending 

 in a bristle. The flowers are many, of greenish white or cream, on tall 

 fine stems, and are usually nodding in the bud. To the garden- 

 varieties of this, its hybrids and its kaleidoscopic forms, there is no end. 



S. Spruneri stands close to *S. marginata. and as the species is 

 officially unknown in gardens, it may be wondered whether this is 

 not the pretender that often does duty for S. scardica. It forms 

 enormous and very dense hard level mats in the upper region of 

 Parnassus and Olympus, with columnar leafy shoots packed together, 

 of oval leaves only a quarter of the size of S. marginata's. minute, 

 densely overlapping, leathern, hard, and blunt, with a little point at 

 the rounded tip, flat and faintly keeled, with a band of grey cartilage 

 round them, and a dim fringe at then edge, and a rare hme-pit here 

 and there along the margin. The many stems are about an inch 

 high, set with glandular leaves, and carrying several brilliant white 

 vases, a little smaller than in S. marginata itself, of which, as it has 

 all the habit and beauty, it ought also to have the requirements and 

 robustness. 



S. squarrosa has something in its cushion that recalls those of 

 S. diapensioeides, but on a very very much minuter scale, and much 

 more green than grey. This, in fact, is the smallest of our Kabschias, 

 making fiat hard masses as dense and low as a lichen's, and having all 

 the look of a hoary green lichen in the lower limestones and cool rocky 

 or mossy places of the Dolomites. It is always far smaller and tighter 

 than 5. cae-sia. which in the Dolomites usually lives higher up ; and 

 it may always be known not only by the greener tone, but by the com- 

 pressed minuteness of the crowded shoots, on which the microscopic 

 Laves are so Berried that, although they overlap and recurve, only 

 the tip of each, with its lime-pit, is exposed, so that the mass is hard 

 and elastic with a thousand little unyielding blunt points to the touch. 

 The stems are glandular all over, most threadlike and dainty, rising 

 up in multitudes from the carpet in summer. They are 3 or 4 inches 

 high, and delicately branch to carry several large while flowers, candidly 

 wide-open and round in the petal. It certainly surpasses S. caesia in 

 charm and brilliancy, and in the garden is at least as easy and hearty, 

 if not easier and heartier, in any light limy soil, well-drained yet cool, 

 whether in sun or shade ; so long as it can reasonably be watered, the 

 plant is quite happy and tightly spreads from year to year. In the 

 Alps it will not be seen West of the Dolomites, but there abounds at 



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