ALSINE. 
Aegina, lying splayed out flat upon the shore in the shape of a, star, 
with roseate blossoms. Whether it would prove permanent or hardy 
with us its habitat would lead us to doubt, were not such unlikely 
things perpetually happening. 
A. recurva ranges right across the Alps from the Eastern chains, 
far away into Asia—a most variable little high alpine closely akin to 
A. verna, forming dense tufts of emerald fur, with fine-forked stems, 
more or less downy. A. nivalis and A. condensata are varieties. The 
plant gets its name from the sidelong twist of its narrow blunt leaves 
like the finest grass. 
A. rimarum is a desirable small tuffet, neat and tight, from rock 
crevices in the Cilician Taurus. In general habit it resembles A. im- 
bricata, but that it is all downy with glands, with the petals two 
and a half times as long as the calyx. 
A. robusta is a form or synonym of A. gracilis, q.v. 
A. Rosani. See under Arenaria graminifolia. 
A. rupestris, however, is the jewel of jewels, most especially to be 
longed for. In all respects it is the counterpart of A. verna, but that 
it breaks bravely away from the stainless traditions of the family by 
erupting into a profusion of delicate pink stars. It comes from high 
cliffs of Lebanon and the Levantine Alps. 
A. umbellulifera, from the Cilician Alps, is a beauty of which we are 
still in want. It has the leaves overlapping in four regular rows 
up the stem, as in A. setacea (a thing of no great merit), but otherwise 
has the neat tufted habit of A. verna, except that the larger and more 
brilliant flowers are carried in a flat head or umbel on a 5-inch stem, 
and have their petals narrowing to the base. 
A. verna has served as the standard of comparison for many of 
the foregoing species. It is one of the most charming of our native 
alpines, abundant on the limestone at high altitudes, as for instance on 
the Western face of Ingleborough. Here it forms tidy masses of fine 
and dainty emerald fur, finer and closer and greener than the finest 
grass, the little leaves being more or less downy with glands. The 
frail and dainty flower-stems rise up in early summer, and spray 
or flop to the length of some 3 inches, carrying loosely, on forked 
sprays, clear white stars about half an inch across, whose dimensions 
do not widely vary, though the plant itself differs much in size of 
development, attaining extraordinary exaggeration if it can indulge 
itself on a diet of lead in the neighbourhood of old mines. 
A. Villarsii has little fine greyish leaves in a tuft, with taller stems 
of 7 inches or so, and rather inferior flowers after the style of A. recurva, 
disproportionate to the promising tufts and mats of green foliage. In 
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