SILENE. 



S. Bonji makes a matted tuffet of very narrow small grey 'leaves, 

 with many sterns of some 3 inches or half a foot, each carrying one or 

 two pale-pink flowers with bifid petals. (From the high rocks and alps 

 and open bare places of the Sierra Nevada.) 



S. bryoeides has no right to separate rank from S. acaulis, unless 

 that the petals of the pink stars that crowd its flat and glossy mat are 

 not notched, and its seed -capsules are a little shorter. It is a plant 

 of the Jura. 



S. caespitosa stands near S. Saxifraga, and, like all that group, has 

 not any special brilliance or beauty, though the wide matted ma 

 of shoots have their furnishing value, and the countless frail stems 

 of 8 inches or so carry flowers of pale dim pinky-white. 



S. calif ornica is always a rare species, even in its own country ; 

 and, in ours, like many of its transatlantic kin, requires deep light soil, 

 rich and well-drained, in a sheltered sunny place. In habit it is loose 

 and lax, with branches of 10 inches or so, flopping from the central 

 root-stock, set at intervals with pairs of rather sticky oval-pointed 

 leaves, and branching into sprays that each carry a single flower, huge 

 and ragged, and of the most astonishing velvety scarlet, in a dark 

 calyx. It blooms all through late summer, and should be most tenderly 

 watched, and have its abundant seed collected and sown each season 

 in case of accidents. 



S. Campanula differs in nothing from S. Saxifraga for garden effect. 

 It is a plant from damp shady places of the Maritime Alps, making 

 great masses of fine soft narrow-pointed leaves; and the countless 

 stems spraying out their flowers of dim white, dirtied beneath with 

 brown, are not sticky towards the top, as in S. Saxifraga. 



S. capillipes is another in the same persuasion from the Levant. 



S. caucasica stands closely akin to S. vallesia, to which refer 

 accordingly for its portrait. It has no startling merit. 



S. chromodonta is a delicate little thing of damp rocks and cool 

 mossy places in the same charming stylo and kinship as S. jmsilla. 



S. ciliata approaches S. Borderi, but is larger and less attractive, 

 making lawns of bigger but no less hairy leaves, and carrying cloven - 

 petalled flowers of white or pink in stout hairy calyces on stems of 

 9 inches or so, with one, two, or three blossoms, all turning the same 

 way. 



S. cordifolia forms a glandular-sticky tuft, with broad leaves in 

 pairs on stems of some 4 to 8 inches, each carrying one pretty pinky 

 blossom of delicate flat starry shape, only slightly cloven in the lobe. 

 (Maritime Alps.) 



S. Correvoniana is the doublo form of S. clongata, Bellardi, q.v. 



360 



