TUNICA OLYMPICA. 



T. violacea is the same as the last in all respects, but that the 

 blossoms are violet and the filaments of the anthers considerably 

 shorter. 



T. Biebersteiniana is quite close in all its charms and ways to 

 T. australis in the earlier section, but may be known at once by the 

 bell-shaped golden flowers, nodding before they open, no less than by 

 their flurry filaments. 



T. humilis lives in the sandy places of Eastern Persia, and is 

 indeed humble with a stature of 3 or 4 inches. The flowers are pale- 

 purple inside, and reddish-green outside. T. crispatula is a variety of 

 this. 



T. cretica may be seen on all the high summits of Crete. It is a 

 most dainty little treasure, with very narrow small sickle-shaped 

 leaves, huddled and spread out at the base of the stems of 2 or 3 inches, 

 each carrying a single erect bell of pale pink, pearly white within. 



T. hi flora attains 6 inches or a foot. The leaves are flat and narrow, 

 standing up and spreading outward instead of lying down meeldy along 

 the earth, and the stems are so far better than even the promise of 

 their name that they can carry as many as four or five flowers, which 

 are erect bells of greenish-blue tone, white on the inside, with a yellow 

 blotch at the base of the segments. It lives on the limy alpine heights 

 above Schiraz in Persia, and ranges thence far away through Iberia 

 and Russia to the Siberian Altai. 



T. oxypetala is a rare species of Taurus, with leaves twice as broad as 

 in T. Clusiana, and more or less wavy. This Tulip has affinities with 

 T. baeotica in the earlier group, but here, besides the fluffy filaments, 

 the whole plant is quite without down. The large erect blossom is 

 pink, with the three outer segments recurving, while the three inner 

 ones stand firmly up in a three-pointed cup ; and the whole amply 

 bell-shaped goblet is carried erect. 



And there remain, of course, innumerable other species of interest 

 or beauty ; this list being merely meant as a help among some of the 

 more valuable kinds for the rock-garden as already known, but 

 always to bo supplemented by further discoveries, and by ampler 

 treatment of the larger sorts in catalogues and other aids to knowledge. 



Tunica olympica is but an unvalued annual. 



Tunica prolifer is Dianthus prolifer, an annual of egregious 

 worthlessness. 



Tunica Saxifraga is one of the most precious of perennials, 

 making a denso and woody permanent root-stock, from which there 

 springs and floats every year an airy cloud a foot high, and more 

 across, of thread-fine branches in a haze of green, bearing delicate 



413 



