SILENE. 



making enormous masses, into which all over are rammed minute 

 squinny pink stars much smaller and less glowing than in the species. 

 As for the elongata form, this is now acknowledged by Dalla Torre as 

 a species. 



S. alpestris stands high among the best and most valuable of the 

 famil}'. It likes a cool and not too sunny place hi rich light soil, and 

 there it rambles loosely far and wide, with tufts of long-oblong narrow 

 leaves of bright and sliming green ; from the shoots here and there, 

 all the summer through, rises a profusion of delicate branching stems 

 about 6 or 8 inches high, firm, and yet most dainty in effect, sticky 

 with glands as they ascend, and carrying wide showers of far-spaced 

 lovely white stars with fringy petals, very rich and pure in effect. It 

 is a common plant of damp places at rather low elevations in the lime- 

 stones of the Carpathians and the Tyrol, while on the granites there 

 develops an absolutely paludose form, of extreme loveliness, growing 

 in the stream-beds and sphagnum mats under the Great Glockner, 

 and producing sheaves of blossom in the most exquisite shades of clear 

 pure rose. And there is also a double-flowered version of the white 

 type. All forms and types of S. alpestris seed abundantly (like all the 

 race) and can also be multiplied at any time by division. 



S. alpina is a name that can be ignored. 



S. apnea is declared to come from China, to attain 8 inches, and 

 to have flesh-pink flowers in June. 



S. argaea is a minute Eastern species, barely 2 inches high, with 

 white stars in June. 



S. Armeria is an annual of the South, with heads of chalky-rose 

 bugles, on stems of a foot or so, enhanced by pairs of ample and rather 

 stem-embracing narrow-oval leaves of glaucous-blue. In the moraine 

 it seeds itself from year to year, and grows very much smaller and more 

 delicate, so that it has real charm and value, flowering when there is 

 apt to be a feeling of emptiness there, throughout late summer and on 

 into the autumn. 



S. Asterias, with a variety, 8. a. grandifiora, is also an annual, but 

 larger, taller, bushier, hi the same style of display. 



S. auriculata is an alpine tuffet, with pointed leaves and white 

 flowers lonely on short stems, emerging from a baggy calyx. 



S. Borderi is a small lawn-forming species, mossy and dense, peculiar 

 to the rocks of the French and Spanish Pyrenees hi the alpine zone. 

 It makes close masses, with hairy little spatulate leaves, and quite 

 short stems, more and more sticky towards the top, where it unfolds 

 two or three bright pink flowers with deeply cloven lobes in a large 

 calyx. 



359 



