SAXIFRAGA. 



stars dotted with yellow, throughout the summer and early autumn. 

 The Um e-cusped leaves at onoe jump to the eye, and provo the species ; 

 which grows as readily as the rest, and has yielded various hybrids 

 sometimes called S. x arguta and S. x trifida. 



8. tridactylites. — Our own common spring-blooming annual, the Rue- 

 leaved Saxifrage, has no place in the garden except to give a diminished 

 picture of what we shall see if we aro tempted by tho names of S. con- 

 trover sa, 8. Blavii, or 8. adscendens in catalogues. 



8. tridens is a quite dwarf and small alpine Mossy, from tho Apen- 

 nines, growing sweet-temperedly in cool and peaty soil, where it forms 

 cushions of tiny and close-huddled ground-hugging rosettes, with 

 bright-green, three-toothed minute leaves very scantily endowed with 

 hairs, and sending up very short stems of milk-white stars. Its big 

 brother in tho race is little 8. androsacea, to which it stands in much 

 the same relation as does 8. depressa from the Balkans, from which 

 it emerges distinct in its yet more pygmy dimensions, especially short 

 stems, and scanty endowment of hair ; but of which it may almost be 

 taken as tho Western development, both being sub-species, or oven 

 mere varieties, of the widespread 8. androsacea. 



8. " tridentata " is the most fatuous of catalogue mistakes for S. tri- 

 dentina, which is the grandest of all types of 8. Burseriana, q.v. 



S. x trifida is a hybrid between S. tricuspidata and S. tenella, 

 with the foliage tri-cleft after the fashion of S. tricuspidata, but 

 broader and not so deeply and sharply cloven as in S. X arguta. It 

 will take the culture that suits the parents ; hybrids and parents too 

 are pretty dainty things (for cool soils and well-drained moist beds), 

 rather than dazzlers of any dizzying distinction. 



S. trifurcata is the true 8. ceratopliylla of Dryander, and has also 

 borne t he names of 8. Schraderi and 8. paniculata. It is a specially hand- 

 some, free-growing, woody-stemmed Mossy, quite easy and luxuriant 

 and spreading and popular. It is perfectly hairless all over, but in tho 

 typical form the long-stemmed rich-green leaves, thick and leathery, 

 and cut and curled like a stag's hom, are coated with a balmy viscid 

 sweat, and the whole plant is strongly aromatic. The flowers are nobly 

 large and white, borne in generous widely-branching sprays, usually of 



lish colour, that tend to flop, so that tho blossom-boughs, to hold 

 their flowers upright, havo all to twist round and come up in what 

 looks like a one-sided spray. It can bo mistaken for no other species, 

 for its loose and branching panicles of bloom at once distinguish it 

 from the closer clusters and tho longer, less open goblots of 8. geranio- 

 eides, to which, in some of its forms, it sometimes approaches. 



8. triternata, of Glasnevin, is an entrancing but curiously miffy 



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