ACANTHOLEIMON. 
leaflets coarsely toothed at their edge. The flower-heads are large 
and coarse and purplish. 
A. sanguisorbae has much the same habit, but is smoother and 
less silky, with smaller rounder heads of purplish blossom. 
A, sericea is yet another of the creepers, having fine narrow leaflets, 
silver-grey with a coat of down, set with deep toothings, especially at 
their ends. 
A. splendens, from Chile, luxuriates yet more in a glistering armour 
of silver. (Among other members of the race worth growing are 
A. laevigata, A. pinnatifida, A. ovalifolia, and A. magellanica. 
A. pumila is a quaint break in its family, upright, fine, and graceful, 
exactly suggesting an intrigue between Thalictrum alpinum and 
Poterium sanguisorba.) 
Acantholeimon brings us now to a race of incomparably higher 
rank in the rock-garden. The Thornyfields are a curious and beautiful 
race of vindictive little vegetable hedgehogs, fierce spiny cushions 
from which spring, in late summer, abundant graceful plumes of 
blossom, pink or white, each flower enclosed in a contrasting chaffy 
cup. The race is most nearly allied to the Sea-lavenders, but has 
more reminiscence of some strange saxifrage gone spiteful-mad but 
unusually graceful ; it is entirely confined to the upper mountain rocks 
in the Alps of Asia Minor, extending across Persia to the borders of 
India. In cultivation the whole family is grateful for a very warm 
dry corner, in a light and perfectly well-drained soil, enriched with 
lime, and diversified by abundance of chips and grit. Here they will 
all prove perfectly hardy and vigorous, but have a tiresome habit of 
unexpectedly passing away in full flood-tide of prosperity without 
any assignable reason. Nor is it possible to propagate them easily, 
except by seed ; with the one honourable exception of the best-known 
of all, the indestructible and delightful A. glumaceum, which will 
strike fresh roots from its branches, if soil be worked down in the 
mass, and the several shoots either firmly inserted or layered like 
a carnation. In such an important and beautiful family we have 
need to know more, not only about such species as we possess, but 
also about the many others, no less beautiful, of which at present 
we only live in hopes. 
A. acerosum, another of whose names has been A. Pinardii, forms 
wide bushlings of 6 to 10 inches, the spiny leaves being about 2 or 
3 inches long, bright blue-grey, with lime-pits stamped upon them. 
They are very specially long, fat and thorny. The undivided flower- 
sprays rise up to 6 or 8 inches, carrying many spikelets of white 
flowers. (Anatolia, &c.) 
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