ALYSSUM. 
misleadingly stated by Godron and Grenier. Another version, yet 
distinct, is a new species, A. Tavolarae, discovered on limy rocks 
there, down by the sea. This rises to the height of 15 inches, and 
is branchy, erect, and larger in all its parts. 
A. rostratum is in reality a worthless biennial. The plant which 
figures under this name in gardens and catalogues is simply A. 
alpestre. 
A. saxatile needs no description, standing high among the twelve 
most popular cheap and cherished splendours of the rock-garden 
in spring, when its hoary grey, lax-leaved foot-high bushes are 
smothered in their loose wide hillocks of gold. The double variety 
is even richer of effect: there is a compacta-form ; and the variety 
A. citrinum, with flowers of a refulgent moony citron-yellow, is by far 
the most beautiful of all, and cries aloud for such a contrast as that 
of Aubrietia Lavender. This A. saxatile type ranges from South 
Europe to the East. 
A. serpyllifolium. See under A. alpestre. 
A. sphacioticum, from the mountain-tops of Crete, from 6500 to 
7000 feet, forms a dense and minute little tufty 3-inch shrubling, 
with undivided stems rising from a vertical root, all clothed in small 
ovate leaves, silvery-scaly, diminishing up the stem till they dwindle 
to being narrow oblong. The flowers are lemon-yellow, larger than 
those of Montanum. 
A. spinosum = Ptilotrichum spinosum, q.v. 
A. suffruticosum is woody and sub-shrubby, with short, twisting 
prostrate shoots, clothed in oblong narrow leaves, scaly and with 
silver hairs. There is a smaller and more condensed variety, A. 
olympicum. The range of the type is among the mountains of 
Syria. 
A. Wiersbickii is a species from Eastern Europe in the relationship 
of A. montanum, but no more specially alluring. 
A. Wulfenianum is another species mistreated by catalogues, which 
know it not, although they freely offer it, sending out forms of Mon- 
tanum instead. True A. Wulfenianum is a really beautiful plant, in 
habit akin to A. idaewm, but much larger, and flopping handsomely 
down the face of a rock in sheets of many brittle fleshy tortuous shoots, 
set with rounded leaves very fat and thick, and shimmering with 
silver as delightfully as those of A. idaewm, but noticeably rounder, 
less elongate, and fewer. The flower-heads are ample and loose 
enough to show the shape of each large blossom, of a refulgent clear 
pale yellow with broad petals notched at the end. This is A. ovirense 
of some foreign collectors—a name drawn from the Hoch Obir in the 
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