WALDHEIMIA TRIDACTYLOEIDES. 



picture and possibilities of this rarity, however, need not greatly con- 

 cern the cultivator, as, up to the present, only one specimen of it has 

 ever been seen — more than twenty years ago, on the alpine heights 

 of Velez Planina. 



Waldheimia tridactyloeides is a delightful Composite from 

 the high moraines of the Altai, wriggling far and wide among the 

 stones, and emerging in little clumps of small, fleshy, three-toothed 

 leaves, huddled in a rosette, on each of which sits a big rose- pink 

 Aster or Townsendia, ampler and more splendid of effect than the 

 last, as the rays are twice as long as the disk is wide. It lives in 

 the upmost shingles of Alatau by the birthplaces of the streams, and 

 should have a place in the choicest part of the underground-watered 

 moraine-bed. 



Waldsteinia. — These are delightful little plants, too, but of a 

 quite different kindred. For they stand between Geum and Poten- 

 tilla, and make, in any soil, the most admirable and freely-running 

 carpets of handsome green foliage, from which are thrown up loose 

 few-flowered sprays of large golden strawberry- flowers in early 

 summer, and on spasmodically through the season. W. geoeides has 

 simple kidney-shaped leaves without divisions or lobings, and does 

 not send its runners roaming over the face of the earth ; W. sibirica 

 has three-lob ed leaves irregularly cut and toothed, among which, as 

 the frail stems wander, come up sprays of two or three round- 

 petalled yellow blooms, often divergent twins from a stalk hardly 

 higher than the foliage ; W. lobata, W. fragarioeides, and W. trifolia 

 (W. ternata) are all most useful and charming ground-coverers in 

 much the same style; W '. fragarioeides and W. trifolia are more 

 especially attractive, very freely roaming, and easily to be divided 

 at any moment, with their running clumps of three-lobed leaves, 

 with the segments irregularly toothed ; and then, in early summer, 

 their specially graceful and abundant inclining sprays of golden 

 stars, reaching their perigee in a long and lax succession of 

 brilliance. 



Weldenia Candida must be looked to with care ; for it is a 

 high-alpine of the Mexican Mountains, only to be trusted out in 

 deep, light, and perfectly -drained soil in a warm and sheltered 

 position. And if glass or boughs are put over the spot in winter 

 when the plant has died down, it is not to be imag ned that the 

 Weldenia will resent that attention, but the more securely in spring 

 will it again send up, from its long radish of a root, its unfolding 

 rosettes of smooth and pointed, narrow, succulent leaves, like those 

 of so me wee unfolding glossy pine-apple, among which sits for some 



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