UMBILICUS. 



up of tongue-shaped tiny fleshy leaves, fringy with hairs. The stems 

 are some 2 inches high or so, carrying a radiant spray, not a close 

 spike, of a few brilliant -golden deeply-cleft flowers, after the starry 

 style of Semper vivum. and borne after the spreading fashion of such 

 Houseleeks as 8. hirtura. but on stems minutely down}*. It blossoms 

 all through the later summer, and has its home in the high rocky 

 places of all the Cappadocian Alps and Cihcian Taurus. 



U. chrysantJiu-s is a quite hardy easy pleasant species to deal with, 

 and is often seat out under the name of Sempervivum chry-santhum. 

 It is almost a repetition of the last, but twice or three times the size, 

 making masses, in any open warm soil, of handsome downy-haired 

 rosettes of bright green, much fatter than hi those of Sempervivum 

 Gaudini. and looser in the leaf, but not greatly dissimilar in general 

 effect. The pubescent glandular stems are 6 inches high, coming up 

 by the side of the rosette, and open into a sprayed Sempervivum 

 head of ample starry flowers of soft yellow, rayed with red, less golden 

 in colour than the last. Other species in this neighbourhood, whose 

 dullness of flower or insecurity of habit unfits them for cultivation, 

 are 8. Haussknechtii and S. plat yphyll urn, from regions too southerly 

 and hot for hope ; and 8. oppositifolium, which would not be, in any 

 case, to be desired. 



U. Cotyledon=U. pendulinus. 



U. elymaiticu-s has specially dense rosettes, almost smooth and hair- 

 less, of tongue-shaped spoon-shaped fat leaves with a long diminution to 

 their base ; the flower-stems bear a freely branching shower of yellow 



soms that are not as good as they might be, for they are only half 

 the length of the calyx. For the same reasons, beware of U. globulariae- 

 olius. U. serratu-s. U. persicus. U. ciliolatus, and U. horizontal!-?. 



U. leucanthus, from the drier places of the Ural, denies its right to 

 the name by bearing abundant flowers of pale flesh-pink, three times 

 the length of their calyx, on many one-flowered sprays in a noble 

 pyramidal shower above the handsome hostile rosettes, with each 

 packed leaf ending in a sharp incurving spine. 



U. libanoticu? makes clumps of handsome glaucous foliage, dimly 

 toothed at the edge. The tall spike is rather one-sidedly furnished 

 with hanging bells of bright pink-purple, leaving their calyx far 

 behind. 



U. Lievenii is a good perennial, with all its leaves almost cylindrical. 

 They soon fall from the 10-inch flower-stems, which cany dense heads 

 of rather one-sided sprays set with most handsome large flowers, like 

 fine waxen tubes of pink, no less than four times the length of their 

 forgotten calyx. (Turkestan. Persia. Ural. Altai.) 



415 



