SYMPHYANDRA. 



into laterals that each carry three or four violet flowers nodding upon 

 their thread-fine foot -stalks. The lower leaves stand up from the 

 stock on long stems ; they are heart-shaped egg-shaped, coarsely and 

 irregularly toothed. Leaves and blooms alike are smaller than in the 

 rest of the race, and the plant hangs happily at home in the sheer 

 cliffs of Georgia. 



8. cretica lives in the rocks of Sphakia, &c, with stems of 18 inches 

 or so, smooth, hairless, and pale green, with pale-green heart-shaped 

 leaves on their stalks, rather deeply and crudely toothed. In the 

 flower-spire tho large nodding bells are solitary, each on a very short 

 foot-stalk, only one to a spray in the short loose pyramid of eight or 

 nine blossoms. 



S. Hoffmannii is a taller thing than these last, attaining 18 inches, 

 and carrying white bells. It is the only member of the race, as we 

 know it, that prefers a rather cool and half-shaded place on the 

 rockwork. 



S. lazica is another 18-inch species, quite weakly and elegant in the 

 stem, hugging the cliffs and grottoes of Lazic Pontus, and there making 

 tufts of the usual heart-shaped egg-shaped leaves, downy-green, and 

 sharply toothed on their long stems. The blossom-sprays are graceful 

 and pendulous and long-drawn-out, carrying towards the end a very 

 loose and delicate fountain of some half a dozen or more trumpet - 

 bells of enormous size, 3 inches long, and of a ghostly glassy white, 

 swinging daintily each on a long fine foot-stalk of its own. 



S. ossetica approaches the unparalleled magic of the next, from 

 which it chiefly differs in being perfectly hairless and downless, even 

 brighter in the green of its leaves (which are often longer, and usually 

 more pointed), and with stems of a foot or so, less lavishly branching 

 and hanging out chimes of loveliest blue. 



S. pendula. — It is many years since I have considered this strangely 

 neglected plant (which no one else seems able even to see) as easily 

 the most beautiful thing of its kind that the garden holds in August. 

 It is a copious grower and quite immortal, making huge root -stocks 

 from which spring such a multitude of fine branches that they pile 

 up into a mounded mass, 2 feet across, of bright -green foliage, oval- 

 pointed and crimpled and toothed. From this, in late summer, imper- 

 ceptibly emerges a corresponding multitude of fine and finely-branching 

 flower-stems, lying down upon an heap like the waters of the Red Sea, 

 or straying forth in cascades upon the ground. And on these, for 

 three months without intermission, are borne unending processions of 

 large long bells in the most wonderful glassy shade of pale and trans- 

 lucent yellow-white, faintly and most exquisitely green like some 



(1,996) 385 ii.— 2 B 



