WAHLENBERGIA. 



close cousins to Edmianthus, but that each flower-stem, whether long 

 or short., carries only one blossom, instead of a plethoric huddle that 

 ruins their effect. 



II". ''((• Iniana stands overshadowed by the next, from which it 

 differs obviously in being a much smaller cushion in all its parts, with 

 smaller lilac blooms sitting tight into a smaller tulfet of tinier leaves, 

 which have the further specific distinction of being perfectly smooth and 

 hairless on er surface. It ranges much further east, being 



found in the mountains of Daghestan ; a most rare and little-known 

 species, which should surely be a most choice jewel for a choice place 

 in sunny limestone rockwork in specially light and stony limy loam 

 or moraine. 



W. ; ' •'I'o. — This is the jewel of the family. Multiply the last 

 by two or three, imagine tuffets of pure silver 8 inches across, built of 

 spiny, glistering, pointed little leaves, with their upper surface coated 

 in silvery close-piled silk, and their mass in early summer hidden from 

 view beneath a dense settlement of great lilac -lavender cups, sitting 

 close over the cushion and gazing sturdily up to the day. Such is 

 TT. pumilio on the highest limestone summits of Dalmatia ; and such, 

 without the slightest difficult}-, is W. pumilio perfectly prepared to be 

 in any well-drained, choice, warm place in the garden, in any limy 

 light loam full of stones ; but most especially in the moraine, where 

 its silvered cushions wax round and fat and full immediately, until 

 summer makes them hide themselves in a veil of purple bells, as it 

 were a silver table set with myrrhine goblets for a party of deplorably 

 bibulous fairies (for such lucent amethyst vessels could never hold so 

 dull a drink as dew). In such conditions the plant is one of the 

 easiest of Alpines, as it is certainly one of the most lovely. In firm 

 rock, indeed, it will not even ask for sun, but on the northerly 

 Cliff at Ingleborough is now six years old in a wide mass of flopping 

 stems from a microscopic crevice in Avhich a rooted cutting was 

 inserted long since. For by cuttings is the best means of multi- 

 plying this beloved treasure, that hardly ever seems freely to set 

 seed with us. 



W. dinarica (IT. pumUiorum of catalogues) may be best pictured 

 by imagining the last, grown in close shade and drawn up. It is 

 looser in the cushion, the leaves are longer, less silver, and often 

 aim' with hairs; while the purple vases do not sit tight to 



the mass, but stand off it on slender and rather weakly stems quite 

 evident very often to the eye. It is no less, however, a lover of open 

 mountain-tops than the last, and no less easy in the garden, though 

 a sp< iferioi value, not only on account of the less brilliant 



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