STAEHELINIA. 



Staehelinia. — This is a race of sub-shrubby woody Composites 

 for hot dry corners of hot dry rockwork, where they form bushlings 

 n\ whitened foliage, set in later summer with narrow flowers. 8. dubia 

 belongs to Southern Europe and is about 15 inches high, with blossoms 

 of purple-rose ; S. unijlosculosa is the prettier, from the burning hills 

 of Greece, with a stature of some 8 inches, and flowers of clearer pink. 

 Seed and cuttings. 



Stanleya pinnatifida is an American Crucifer of about 2 feet 

 high, for a warm dry place in poor soil ; it has feather-cut fine foliage 

 and freely branching spires of golden-yellow flowers from May to 

 July. It may be raised from seed, but has no particular value. 



Statice. — The Sea-Lavenders are eminently a race of the South, 

 developing into vast bushes in the Canaries, from the modest little 

 size of our own 8. ovalifolia (S. auriculaefolia, Vahl.). As a family, 

 considering their provenance and their taste for hearing what the wild 

 waves may be saying, by the sterile sands and salty marshes of the 

 Southern seas, the Statices are a family of astonishing willingness and 

 ease in cultivation, taking to good fat loam anywhere in the open 

 garden, with a zeal as warm as if they had not chosen in nature to 

 plough the sands. Catalogues freely offer the herbaceous-border 

 species, of which quite the best is 8. latifolia, with very handsome 

 evergreen foliage, and clouds of lavender a yard high and a yard across 

 through the later months of the summer. Rather smaller, but 

 beautiful, and, like all these, so especially valuable as helping to fill 

 the voids of autumn, are S. eximia, 8. altaica, and S. Gmelini — this 

 last with splendid glaucous-blue leaves and swathes of dark-purple 

 stars. 8. incana (S. tatarica) has loose foot-high showers of bright 

 ruby-red (or variable) blossoms above rosettes of decorative leaves 

 (it has a neat compacted nana form) ; and S. speciosa with our own 

 native 8. Limonium blooms earlier, in May and June, and is worthy of a 

 place. There remain, however, a vast number of smaller species, of the 

 most gracious and well-bred effect on the rockwork, not tho least 

 charming being S. minuta, with an indefinite number of variations ; 

 but the typo is the tight little Sea-Lavender that sits in the crevices of 

 the Mediterranean coast, and has specially delicate rare-flowered flights 

 of lavender blossoms in winter, on sprays of 3 or 4 inches above the 

 clumps of small rosettes made of hoary-grey spoon-sbaped leaves, 

 minute and elegant. Like so many of theso Mediterranean plants, it 

 is perfectly hardy in the garden, but takes some years to learn how 

 silly it is to try and flower in the middle of an English winter. S. 

 spalhiilald is one of the beauties of the race, growing to 6 or 8 inches, 

 with fine blue-grey persistent foliage, and notably brilliant blossoms of 



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