ACHILLEA. 
rare good species in this race, it is fair that the whole should not be 
condemned, but the sheep be duly shepherded away from the goats. 
A. abrotanoeides, from Dalmatia and the far Eastern Alps, has a 
close resemblance to the Western A. Clavennae, whose habit, and 
divided leaves, and clusters of fairly large white flowers on stalks of 
6 to 9 inches, it possesses; but the leaves are ashy-grey with a felted 
down, and the whole plant smells of wormwood. 
A. ageratifolia is simply a false name for Anthemis aeizoon, q.v. 
A. ambrosiaca is a 6-inch plant with very ferny foliage and the rays 
of the flower rather short. 
A. argentea, a most beautiful mass of silver-white mounded 
leaves, emitting white marguerites. 
A. atrata is an abundant and well-known alpine, with many 
children, sub-species, and varieties all along the ranges. It has the 
carriage of a Camomile, and a clustered head—on a stem of 6 inches or 
so—of large flowers which are, unfortunately, of a grubby and world- 
soiled white, indescribably unalluring, with a sad bad eye of dirty 
darkness. In the same condemnation and of much the same type 
is A. nana (like a woolly little Milfoil), as well as A. Clusiana, A. 
moschata (the former more finely ferny, the latter greyer and smaller- 
flowered than Atrata, with an eye that is always yellow), together 
with A. Herba-rota, which has oblong leaves, only scalloped, and 
intensely aromatic ; otherwise resembling ugly little rare A. moschata 
of the granitic heights. All these from the European ranges—with 
hybrids so many that there is no safety in undescribed Achilleas, 
all these being dismal weeds; while from the Levantine mountains 
we have similar dinginesses in A. armenorum and A. Aucheri. And 
Switzerland also produces A. Huteri, another species of quite 
secondary rank ; as is also A. Fraasii. 
A. aurea makes flat mounds of compacted feathery foliage, from 
which through the summer rises a great number of erect stems about 
5 inches high, with flattened heads of yellow flower. 
A. Barbeyana, however, shows the silver lining to the cloud of 
the race, so brilliantly does the whole plant shine with silver sheen— 
a neat dense little gleaming tuft, very rare on the mountain-tops of 
Aetolia, with white flowers in a dense simple head, at the top of stems 
from 2 to 6 inches. 
A. cartilaginea, a species from Taurus and East Caucasus, brings 
us into the clearly defined group of which our native A. Plarmica, 
though so lank for the garden, is a real ornament, with its tall aspiring 
élancé habit, and loose few-flowered heads of large and handsome white 
stars. A. cartilaginea, however, is shorter, its leaves are broader 
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