SEDUM. 



_' oi 3 inches from June to September, all over \h<- crowded 

 !o.) 



of Rl la to the head i I 

 its noble stout stems of 18 inches 

 or so, set with very ample flat-toothed foliag d firm, of 



the loveliest powdered blue-gi ding in that 1. d yet 



dehcate head of chalk-pink flowers in September, O -tober, and 

 ruber, so dearly beloved by all the lingering insects that the 

 disgraceful intoxication of the bees upon its Uos-oms affords 

 another warning to the young, such as may so freely be drawn from 

 this deplorably immoral insect, once mistakenly accepted as the 

 of modest and industrious excellence (whereas no German officer, 

 combined with no murderous suffragette, could quite unite the apian 

 iniquities of cruelty and intemperance). There are other garden forms 

 and improvements of 8. spectabUe (which is sometimes offered under 

 the name of 8. Fabaria — a vastly inferior thing, q.v.), such as the 

 more vivid-coloured plant called 8. s. atropurpurewn, and another, 

 "Brilliant." They all thrive excellently and for ever in deep rich 

 soil in open sunny places, and make portly stiff bushes of blue and 

 rose-capped splendour in the last and saddest days of the garden, when 

 life has not yet wholly given up the struggle, nor deaUi yet wholly 

 triumphed. 



8. spurium. — This is the type of so many useful species, and one 

 of the most useful and common itself, to be everywhere seen in poor 

 soils and places, even under trees, making long flopping mats of its 

 rooting sprays, set with pairs of glossy toothed leaves, and ending 

 in rounded starry* heads in high summer, and for a month and more 

 to come, of large pinky star-flowers of typical blurred rose (as if they 

 had been left under water rather long), or else of a yet more blurred 

 and diaphanous pinkish-white. There is also a brighter form called 

 8. s. splendens. 



S. Stahlii grows about 4 inches high, has yellow flowers, and comes 

 from Mexico. 



S. stdlatum has no merit. The purplish flowers are particularly 

 narrow and thin in the ray, borne on two or three scorpion-tail 

 recurving branches, on stems of 7 inches or so, set with obovate 

 wedge-shaped scalloped foliage. A common annual of Southern 

 Eur: 



''il'i/u makes a tuft of 3 or -i inches, densely set with 

 leaves, and especially so on the sterile shoots. The flowers are pinkish- 

 white, «aiii<(l in •; Quite common in the 

 American alps. 



312 



