SAXIFRAGA. 



the Adamcllo in the East to Livigno in the West. It forms enormous 

 rounded masses, as firm as rock, and densely, painfully thorny — not to 

 be touched or sat on unadvisedly — of specially close-rammed rosottes 

 built of iron-hard narrow-triangular emerald foliage, spike-pointed and 

 fringed at the base, and edged with cartilage, but only faintly pitted 

 with lime, and altogether much greener in effect than those of any other 

 Kabschia. It has no real affinity to 8. Burseriana, but stands quite close 

 in the race to S. scardica, of which it has exactly the massed habit and 

 the firm priokly cushions ; but here they are greener and harder, the 

 leaves narrower, darker, sterner, more upstanding, serried and thorny. 

 The flowers, however, have precisely the same effect ; they come up on 

 innumerable glandular stems of 4 or 5 inches, branching at the top into 

 the same curious loose wide heads, like a Crucif er's, of magnificent white 

 vase-shaped blossoms, standing each on a definite foot-stalk in a simul- 

 taneous cluster. As in all the rest there are finer and inferior forms ; 

 but the type is always a wonder and an awe, when you see the round 

 dark masses of lucent sombre green clinging high and hard, above 

 your head, in the impregnable cliffs of the Grigna, and waving at you 

 in scorn their drooping tassels of white bloom — that bow the pale stalks 

 beneath their weight, and afterwards, with stem and all, assume a 

 series of yellow tones fading mto amber. It is no easy thing to collect 

 either, owing to its incurable propensity for precipices ; but supports 

 removal well, and soon becomes re-established. In cultivation it 

 wants careful planting in a sunny, warm, and perfectly well-drained 

 situation, between cliffs of limestone (if possible), or perhaps in a lime- 

 stone moraine. It is not always very quick about starting, and seems to 

 have a strong dislike for superfluous moisture, or dankness, sunlessness, 

 or darkness of any sort. 



S. varians=8. moschata, q.v. 



S. veronicaefolia. See under 8. atlantica. 



8. virginiensis is a by no means interesting American Boraphila, with 

 branching stems of about a foot high, carrying showers of white little 

 stars (double ones, in an improved garden-form), above rosettes of 

 toothed oval leaves on short stems, dark and leathery. It is usually 

 ignored, though a place might more readily be made for it in a cool 

 out-of-the-way corner than for its better known and more popular 

 variety, 8. pennsylvanica. 



S. viscidula is a glandular tiny Hirculus from high-alpine Sikkim, 

 standing near 8. Lychnitis, but smaller in tho golden stars, which are 

 also carried one to three on a stem instead of always lonely. 



S. x vochinensis is a garden name for a hybrid in the group of S. 

 aeizoon and 8. incrustata. It has the usual beauty of dark-green and 



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