ALYSSUM. 
Cretan Ida ; and a treasure in the rock-garden, especially to flop and 
fall with its long flattish shoots from some sunny ledge or crevice. 
A. Lagascae = Ptilotrichum purpureum, q.v. 
A. lepidotum, a tight close tuft all glorious with silver glitter, made 
up of short dense leafy little shoots of tiny oval-elliptic foliage, from 
which the heads of yellow blossom hardly emerge, but cover the whole 
tuft. A specially charming plant (not unlike A. aeizoeides), from the 
high Alps of Lycia. 
A. montanum, though not the most attractive of its group, serves 
admirably for an illustration, as being the common alpine Alyssum of 
the main European ranges, and universally known in cultivation. It 
is a tufted plant, greyish-green, attaining about 8 inches at the most, 
with closely congested boughs, mounding themselves up, and lying out 
along the ground, unbranching, and rising at their ends, beset with 
small rough oval-oblong leaves covered with a dense ashy-grey felt. 
The flowers are particularly numerous, rather small, arranged in a lax 
long head, bright yellow, with notched petals. (The species is variable : 
A. ochroleucum and A. Hymettium are varieties.) Closely akin is 
A. Mulleri from Turkish Armenia and North Persia, but with leaves 
much narrower and the whole growth more hoary. Also A. mouradicum, 
from Phrygia, at alpine elevations—a small sub-shrubby thing, with 
fruit perfectly smooth, and boughs flopping and uprising in the same 
way. While from the mountains of Ispahan comes A. persicum, an 
erect-growing stalwart of 6 inches or a foot, sub-shrubby and branch- 
ing, silver-scaly, with leaves half an inch long, and flowers larger 
than in A. montanum, with unnotched obovate petals, and seed-pods 
with a wide margin; and A. Moellendorffianum from Bosnia is yet 
another closely allied species, most attractive, with foliage densely 
silvery. ‘ 
A. ovirense is a false name for A. Wulfenianum, q.v. 
A. oxycarpum, with its varicty A. kurdicum, is like a miniature of 
A. alpestre. 
A. praecox, from the Cilician Taurus, has broader leaves and bigger 
seeds, deeper flowers, and much baggier seed-pods than in any form 
of A. montanum. The plant is sub-shrubby and scaled with silver. — 
A. purpureum = Ptilotrichum purpureum, q.v. 
A. repens, with a variety known as_A. Rochellit, is a creeping yel- 
lowish plant, covered in a soft short pelt. The flowers are unusually 
large. (Mountains of Achaia, Central Arcadia, and Transylvania.) 
A. Robertianum is an extremely rare species peculiar to great 
elevations in Corsica and Sardinia. It is quite close to A. alpestre, 
and the deep pod is not six times the size of Alpestre’s, as has been 
36 
