ALYSSUM. 
3-foot stature exceeding every other of its race. However, great as 
may be the utility of this handsome group, its members cannot 
compare in brilliancy and charm with the neater-habited dwarf 
alpine species. The real heart of the rock-gardener can hardly 
hold anything beyond 6 inches, or a foot at the most. 
A. aeizoeides, accordingly, takes us back to that precious clan. 
For this is a beautiful little species from Armenia and Olympus, 
very tufty and as brilliantly silvery with scales as A. lepidotum, but 
in A. aeizoeides the tiny leaves that thickly clothe the boughs are 
quite narrow and linear, while the petals are narrowly wedge-shaped. 
A. argyrophyllum is another silver-scaly tuffet, with weak prostrate 
boughs, rather frail, and naked at the base. The leaves are obovate 
and the flowers pale yellow, larger than those of A. montanum, in 
clustering heads, and as attractive as the whole plant, which chiefly 
differs from A. idaewm in having narrower scaly pods of half the size. 
A. armenum, from the alpine meadows of Turkish Cilicia, is most 
like A. montanum, but hoary with long stiff starry hairs lying low 
along the growths. The flowers are straw-coloured and the ovary 
felted. 
A. atlanticum, a dwarf plant all silver-grey, with dense starry hairs 
as beautiful under the microscope as frost-crystals (a speciality of 
this family). The spatulate or spoon-shaped little leaves are huddled 
along the branches, and at their end arise big golden blossoms in a 
dense mound. The species ranges from Atlas to the warm limy clifis 
of Granada between 1000 to 4000 feet, and thence away across South 
Russia. (It is to be noted that the epithet refers to Atlas the mountain, 
and has nothing to do with the Atlantic Ocean or regions, which so 
much more readily come to mind.) 
A. aurantiacum decorates the high mountains of Lycia, and is a 
tufted, silver-scaled beauty, with short prostrate undivided shoots, 
oblong narrow foliage, and flowers large and of a goodly rich orange. 
A. Bilimekii, from rocks near Granada, should prove very attractive 
indeed. For it is mere A. sazatile, but reduced to a tidy habit and 
the height of 3 or 4 inches at the outside. 
A. bracteatum is a near cousin of A. alpestre, with twisty flop- 
ping stems, much rounder, silvery-scaly leaves, and pale yellow 
blooms with notched petals (not entire) in a looser, larger head. 
(Persian. Alps.) 
A. callichroum forms a nest of upstanding, short shoots, thick set 
with rounded slightly incurving leaves, large for the plant, beautifully 
hoary-silver, with a conspicuously brighter rim. 
A. condensatum has hard uprising stems of some 6 inches, with 
