ACANTHUS. 
the flowers are large and beautiful, of a bright clear rose-pink or 
purple. There are varieties of this, as of many others (A. tenuifoliwm 
is sent as a form of A. lepturoeides), and the range of the species is 
through the Cilician Taurus. 
A. Wiedemannii, from Galatia, is, in all its habit, a twin to A. 
Echinus, but is perfectly glabrous and smooth, without any glands or 
velvetiness anywhere ; and the flower-spike is less tight and serried. 
Nor need it be supposed that this list precludes us from further hope 
in the race. For here follows a list of other names, some of which may 
prove—though there do exist various ugly and insignificant Acantho- 
leimons—to cover species as good as (if not perhaps better than) sev- 
eral of those already named: Acantholeimon aspadanum, festucaceum, 
flexuosum, oliganthum (often 10 inches high), brachystachyum (hand- 
some with dark bracts, purple-bordered, and flowers boldly veined 
with red), scabrellum, subulatum, quinquelobum, curviflorum, tragacan- 
thinum, truncatum, viscidulum, rosewm, aristulatum, and others. 
However, even without these additions, the foregoing list already 
contains sufficient to whet our appetites and keep our gardens sub- 
sisting for some time to come, on enlarged hopes in the family of 
Acantholeimon. 
Acanthophyllum, though often similar to the last in habit 
and looks, in reality is a little group in the cousinhood of Dianthus, 
haunting high hot rocks from the Caucasus to Persia. Its members 
are but little known in gardens, nor is there any very solid hope that 
they will really prove trustworthy ornaments there. A. spinosum 
is a Caucasian species, but the especial beauty of the family is A. 
grandiflorum, of which, alas, it is hardly fair to expect courage against 
our climate, seeing that it is in the cliffs above Quetta that it forms 
its lovely wide flat tufts of silvery foliage, upon which sit tight the 
beautiful big flowers of glowing purple. 
Acanthosonchus. See under Sonchus spinosus. 
Acanthus does not, of course, belong by rights to the rock-garden. 
Yet decorative value is always decorative value, and a thing beautiful 
in itself is hardly ever out of place. There are many big gardens 
accordingly where, in rich and very deep soil, in a situation calculated 
to shelter and enhance the tropical splendour of their foliage, the 
_ cultivator may live to be grateful (if he leaves them ample verge 
and marge) to such enormous and glistering splendours as A. Candela- 
brum, longifolius, mollis (with its variety latifolius), rigidus, and 
spinosus. Not only are they superb in dark and hearty sheen of 
their great divided corinthian foliage, but above this come towering 
columns of immortal flowers, emerging from their bracts, hooded and 
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