SEDUM. 



so, with casques of imperial violet. S. albina is its match in height, 

 with flowers of yellow and yellowish tones. Tho ridiculous name 

 S. indica japonica stands for several things, chiefly a form with erect 

 stems, crowded with spiros of huddled and rather narrow littlo blooms ; 

 the true S. japonica is a much more delicato, weakly-stemmed attrac- 

 tive species, with softly hairy leaves of groyish tone, and larger scattered 

 flowers of rich colour, that charmingly adorn a rocky ledgo in late sum- 

 mer and autumn with the long open-lipped trumpets of purple-blue. 



Sedum. — This vast raco, as a whole, is curiously uninteresting : 

 as is felt oven by catalogues, that do their best, yet can't say much, 

 and take refuge in an inextricable welter of synonyms and pseudo- 

 nyms. Nearly all Sodums are of easy culture in open poor places — 

 often far too easy in cultivation, and yet more deplorably easy of pro- 

 pagation. Tho race is much too large and dim for us here minutoly 

 to discriminate. There are, however, several mam types, alike of 

 habit and growth, with species that may bo taken as typical. In the 

 first place there is the fleshy-stocked section, with erect leafy stems and 

 flowers usually rather dingy ; this may bo exemplified in S. Rhodiola, 

 and easily grows in any light and deep soil. Then there are tho smaller 

 sheeting rock-plants of low massing habit, such as S. acre and S. album ; 

 the trailing green mat- or carpot-forming section, with starry radiating 

 heads of flower, that may be seen exemplified by S. spurium in every 

 cottage garden ; another group of the same habit, but with rounded 

 and glaucous foliage ; and finally the typo that forms loose masses of 

 shoots, beset with numbers of narrow leaves, fleshy and round in sec- 

 tion, with stems of 8 inches or so, and uncurling heads of branched 

 blossom that open out liko the tail of a scorpion. The type of this is 

 S. rupestre from our cottage walls. In these later days a largo number 

 of spocies has been sent in from Mexico, with more, it is said, to follow. 

 The hardiness of these in most English gardens is open to tho very 

 gravest doubt, and it will be understood that here I do no moro than 

 quote the vendor's description, such as it is, with a note that the word 

 Mexico spells danger, and that tho names are un verified. 



S. acre is our common littlo golden Stone-crop, useful for rough 

 places, and everywhere abundant. 



S. acutifolium makes mats like S. gracile, of shoots very densely 

 sot with cylindric leaves. The stems are 3 or 4 inches high, and both 

 greyish leaves and white flowers (blunt-petalled and in a large head) 

 are considerably bigger. It may be pictured, roughly, as a smaller- 

 growing 8. albiim, with larger leaves (S. Calverti, Boiss.). 



S. adenotrichum grows from 3 to 9 inches high or long, with the 

 glandular-downy leaves rosetted at tho base of the stems, which often 



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