TUSSILAGO. 



tiny pink Pinks in an unimaginable profusion from June till the end 

 of the year. It is a universal plant of all the dry sunny banks of 

 the Southern Alps down to the level of the Mediterranean ; where its 

 little stars may everywhere be seen in dry places by the roadside, 

 never fearing sun. It varies, however, and many of the wild forms 

 are thin and squinny and poor ; in the garden it develops the loveliest 

 amplitude, and grows infinitely larger and finer in every way than it 

 does in the starvation-diet of dust and sunshine that it endures in the 

 hills. Xo fatness, however, seems to impair its permanence, and, 

 though it always looks and does its best in the fullest sunlight, it by no 

 means insists on this as a condition of its comfort. It can be raised by 

 the thousand from seed, and special forms may be secured by division 

 and cuttings. Of these a pinch of seed will develop you several 

 beauties., of larger flower, of blighter soft pink, or more vivid veining, or 

 sometimes of pure white. And there is also a double form, which has 

 the advantage of not being safely hardy or permanent. 



Tunica. xylirr7iiza = Gypsoj>h.H.2L ortegioeides, q.v. 



Tussilago. — Great as is the value and the size of the large 

 Coltsfoots, their place will never be in the rock-garden, and they are 

 indeed by far too vast and invasive for anjihing but the wildest of woods 

 and wildernesses and bogs. 



U 



Umbilicus. — This race stands so squeezed between Sedum and 

 Sempervivum that at various points the species overflow. On the whole 

 it is to Sempervivum that the Navel-worts more closely stand allied, 

 most usually forming rosettes after the same fashion, but rounder, and 

 often thorny in their succulence. The flowers, however, are generally 

 borne in tapering spires, though also sometimes in looser sprays. 

 Their requirements may be held general ; they are all lovers of dry 

 hot rocks in nature : and in the garden, the driest hottest rocks are 

 what they imperatively need, the lightest and most perfectly drained 

 of soil, in the hottest sunlight that the garden affords. They may be 

 raised from their fine seed, and, though the flowering rosette will die, the 

 plant may usually be continued from its offsets. The flowers are 

 borne in summer and on into the Later months : sometimes they make 

 a charming show to match the charm of the rosettes, but often they 

 are shorter than the calyx, or of dim tones that give no effect. 



U. aeizoon is a most delightful little thing, with massed tiny 

 rosettes like those of a Sempervivum, quite small and huddled, made 



414 



