THYMUS. 



it should also be kept going with relays of cuttings, as with S. lim,- 

 sdlm folium. 



Th. stylosum is sometimes offered as Xoccaea. It is a dainty, neat 

 little green impermanent fcuffet with heads of rather spidery-looking 

 lilac-rosy blossoms in earliest spring, and seems to like a rather cooler 

 and less sunny aspect of the moraine than those affected by the rest, 

 which, so long as they are adequately supplied below with water 

 (which sends up its emanations through the soil and so makes a pro- 

 tective envelope of coolness round the plants on the surface), always 

 enjoy all the light and air that may be going, and will not, on the Alps, 

 be found hi the danker and colder exposures of the high shingles. 



Th. Szowitsianum is a biennial like Th. Kotschyanum, from damp 

 places in the Levantine Alps, but it grows a foot high, and has quite 

 loose spires of white blossom. 



Th. violascens attains only to 4 inches, and has flowers of whitish 

 lilac in the mountains of Asia Minor. 



Thymus. — The first of all Thymes is, of course, the common one, 

 than which, for a carpet in hot sunny slopes and levels and walks, there 

 could never be anything more sweet and desirable. And, as with 

 this, so with the rest ; let them have light well-drained soil and the 

 fullest sunshine, and they will all continue to thrive imperturbably. 

 .For they are all children of the smiling South, and bring with them 

 into exile the hot fragrance of the Mediterranean hills ; the}- may 

 all be multiplied from cuttings like kitchen herbs, and used for the 

 stuffing of all hot gravelly poor places, even as one of the family serves 

 as a stuffing for ducks. For, whether they be bushlings or whether 

 they make carpets, they are always charming, no less in their leafage 

 than when enriched with their innumerable little lipped flowers of 

 rose or white or carmine. In the race they stand close to Satureia, 

 Micromeria (that was), and Calamintha ; from the four names a general 

 picture of the group may be painted in the mind. Of the carpeting 

 Thymes, which we will take first, the first of all is S. Serpyllum. But 

 of the Common Thyme there are many varieties that have received 

 names ; botanical variations (each as valuable as the type, whatever its 

 particular eccentricity may be) are Th. S. latifolius, nummular i us, 

 MarscJiallianus, Ochrus, ScMubardii, Kotschyi, squarrosus. Many of 

 these are offered as species. Of garden varieties we have the brilliantly 

 coloured Th. S. coccineus, the yet deeper-toned Th. S. splendens, and 

 the beautiful small-habited and larger-flowered purity of Th. S. albus ; 

 to say nothing of that densely woolly grey form, Th. S. lanuginosus, 

 which is more lovely in the leafage than in the. rather rare pinky 

 flowers, and which is sometimes sent out as a variety of Th. Chamaedrys. 



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