SOLDANELLA. 



shaped design. The flowers, too, seem always to be as pale as the 

 other's only sometimes are ; they are the daintiest wee bells imagin- 

 able, fine and frail in shape, waxy and sturdy and crystalline in 

 their texture, dancing across the damp hollows and stream-basins of 

 the Eastern limestones, and down into the Abruzzi, preferring the finest 

 turf (rather than stony places), which the plant fills with shining 

 masses of minute foliage, over which hover, in the family profusion, 

 pale or snow-white bugles, lined with streaks of violet inside. This, 

 again, revels in the underground -watered bed ; and of this, as of all 

 the race, it has well been said that no Soldanella can have too much 

 moisture in summer, or bo kept too rigidly dry in whiter (cf S. pusilla). 



8. montana is certainly the grandest species of all, and in cultivation 

 certainly the one most rarely seen. It does not affect great elevations, 

 preferring moist and rather opener places among the brushwood and 

 coppice of the Alps from end to end (especially, as some say, on the 

 limestone), widely varying, but always to be easily recognised by its 

 especial amplitude, and singleness of tuft or clump. It is large and loose in 

 growth, with perfectly round leathery dark leaves, usually with a certain 

 amount of vague scalloping at their edge ; from the clump arise stems 

 of 6 or 9 inches, carrying some half a dozen immense lavender-lilac 

 blossoms of particular shallowness, widely open and wildly fringy, with 

 recurving open edges, borne here and there at spacious intervals up the 

 stalk. It is a most stately species, and far too rarely seen in cultiva- 

 tion, where, however, it is yet easier and more lavish than the rest. 

 In catalogues it sometimes appears disguised as 8. Clusii (Curtis), 8. 

 major (Vierh.), 8. alpina (F. W. Schmidt), and 8. villosa (Darracq). 



8. pindicola lives on the actual summit of Pindus, on serpentine rock, 

 in company with Pinguicula hirtiflora; and differs from the last in its yet 

 taller and stouter habit, but essentially in its own peculiarity of having 

 the under surface of the leaves of a pale hoary grey with pitied minute dots. 



8. pusilla (8. Clusii, Gaud.) typifies a new group of only two species, 

 easily known, S. pusilla and 8. minima. All the rest have wide-open 

 bells, ampler or narrower, but always wide, and always deeply fringed 

 to at least half the depth of the bell. But 8. pusilla and 8. minima 

 have long tubular little bells, with only quite a neat and shallow toothing 

 at the edge, much more in the way of frilling than of fringe. 8. pusilla 

 is a fine small neat plant, forming wide masses, and occurring almost 

 as abundantly as S. minima, but usually in damper and stonier places 

 at the same alpine elevations, although they often overlap. The stems 

 rise some 2 to 4 inches above the tiny fat kidney-shaped leaves, 

 smooth-edged, outspread, and of glossy dark green ; and hang out 

 one or two lavender-lilac flowers of the typical elongated tubular bell- 



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