SAXIFRAGA. 



beading of lime-pics round their edge ; they fatten at the tip a little, 

 and widen less, and never (unless drawn up in the shade) stand up or 

 apart in the rosette, but lie unrolled out upon each other so close and 

 firm that your hand feels only a rounded smooth ball under the palm. 

 The flower-spikes are much more numerous than in any variety of 

 S. cochlearis ; they come on glowing little ruby croziers from the 

 humped globe (often as large and domed as the segment of a football), 

 with all the profuseness of an Aeizoon ; they are 4 or 5 inches high, 

 stout and richly furry with red glands, carrying some six or twelve 

 largo and pure-white flowers in a rather tight truss. The affinities of 

 S. valdensis are said by some to be with 8. caesia, a relationship which 

 is by no means obvious hi nature, where the dense masses and balls 

 of out-rolled blue-grey rosettes do indeed suggest afar off a very much 

 tightened and enlarged and compressed 8. caesia ; but the abundant, 

 stout and ruby-furred glandular stems with their handsome burden of 

 white blossom look rather towards 8. aeizoon in their vigour and abund- 

 ance, while the design of truss and bloom takes us back to Kabschia 

 again. In cultivation the plant is quite easy, and rather uncertain. 

 It will soon, however, once suited, grow away contentedly in any well- 

 drained crevice, in sun or shade, in lime or peat — its curious restriction 

 to the rotten schists and sandstones of the Cottians being evidently 

 no part of its essential character, which seems to breathe from every 

 pitted pore a love of lime as keen as that of any other species in the 

 group. Nor does its equally apparent desire for full sun appear to 

 be any rigid characteristic either ; I have known many a clump die 

 off in the full light, and others thrive happily in limestone crevices and 

 damp aspects of a cold and sunless cliff. Its principal requirements 

 are good drainage and careful planting. 



8. valentina differs from 8. trifurcata in being slenderer altogether, 

 with narrower stalks to the leaves, smaller flowers, and sepals and lobes 

 of the foliage blunt instead of sharp. From S. paniculata it can be dis- 

 tinguished nob only by its smaller flower-sprays and slenderer growth, 

 but also by more deeply-cut leaves with blunt strips that do not stand 

 away from each other. It is a beautiful large Mossy of most lavish 

 blooming habit and big white blossom. The whole plant is perfectly 

 hairless and sticky ; the woody stems are densely clad in old dead 

 leaves, and spread into wide cushions of lustrous, loose, and living 

 green. The leaves stand on long stalks, and are profoundly cut into 

 three lobes, blunt and very narrow, with the lateral lobes again gashed, 

 and none of the segments starting widely apart from the rest. 



S. Vandellii can only be seen wedged tightly into the highest, 

 starkest, hottest and driest limestone cliffs of the Lombard Alps, from 



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