ANDROMEDA. 
shady, and undesirable corners, though even there it is not more attrac- 
tive than our own A. sempervirens of similar situations, with flowers 
larger, and of the same brilliancy, even if the growth have a tight leafy 
habit, not like the airy and spraying grace of A. myosotidiflora’s. Raised 
from seed. A. affinis, too, from the waysides of the Southern Alps, 
is very handsome with its long crosiers of blossom, of a rich and true 
imperial violet at their best stage ; but we have little hope of another 
dark purple species, A. /imbata, which is a dwarf and beautiful biennial, 
of painfully rare occurrence on the hot limestones near Aleppo. 
Andromeda. Sce Cassiope. 
Androsacé.—Perhaps of all mountain-races this name is en- 
graved most deeply on the rock-gardener’s heart, like Calais on Queen 
Mary’s, standing as well for his highest hope and pride as for his 
bitterest disappointments. Ths huge clan, so intimately allied to 
Primula that in days past they have been confused one with another, 
divides into many marked sections. In the first place, there is the 
more or less worthless race of annuals, headed by the deceptively- 
named A. maxima, which has the smallest flowers of any on record. 
This section is called Andraspis, and belongs to dry warm and barren 
places, at comparatively low elevations, in the Old and the New 
’ World alike. Such of these as may be thought worth growing are 
easily to be raised from seed; but hitherto our gardens have found 
them nearly all to be useless and unrewarding weeds. Next comes 
the section Pseudo-Primula—the connecting link between Primula 
and Androsace, and therefore confined to the local centre of both, 
the highlands between India and China. The plants in this group are 
usually large and soft and leafy, lax alike in texture and constitution ; 
they are, in appearance, suggestive of Cortusa or Primula obconica, 
and are chiefly met with in the lower mountain region. Only one of 
them has yet publicly appeared in cultivation ; and, though of perennial 
and often stoloniferous habit, they are not likely to be very resistent 
to our climate, nor long-lived in the outdoor garden. With the third ~ 
section, however, we ascend to the alpine heights in the company of 
A.Chamaejasme, whose name it bears. In distribution this famous group 
is wholly arctic and alpine, ranging from the Old World across into 
the most northerly regions of the New, representing a transition from 
the section Andraspis to that of Aretia, the last and the highest of all, 
a race perverse and precious, dear to the gardener’s heart and purse, 
a set of impenetrable tiny domes in the hard rock of summit-cliffs 
in the Alps, of which the type is A. helvetica. This august group is 
entirely confined to the most terrible elevations of the Old World. 
With regard to cultivation, Andraspis needs little and is worthy 
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