ANDROSACE. 
so, very often, do the Pseudo-Primulas, which can also be raised 
easily from seeds (like the last). Seed-raising, however, of the Aretias 
is apt to prove a chancy and precarious pleasure; if the question 
of multiplying them occurs, it is best most carefully to remove some 
of the outer trunks from the main cushion in August and insert them 
into sand-beds, which should then be made reasonably damp—z.e. not 
allowed to get frizzled and dusty, but kept firm and cool. 
Androsace aeizoon, a widely variable species in the section of 
Chamaejasme and sarmentosa, with handsome rosettes of broad 
spoon-shaped leaves, neatly overlapping, leathery, bluish-grey, rough- 
edged, eyelashed, sprinkled (especially at the tips) with microscopic 
white globules. The bare stems are rather tall for the plant, and 
rise to some 6 or 12 inches, carrying a loose head of flowers in varying 
shades of pink. The species belongs to the main chains of Central Asia, 
and is quite protean; the form A. himalaica being comparatively poor, 
while A. integra and A. coccinea (intense red), both from China, are 
much desired. Its habit is to form a mass of tufts, without offsets. 
A. albana, often catalogued, lies under suspicion. The true A. 
albana is an Andraspid from alpine regions of Transcaucasia, forming 
downy rosettes of spoon-shaped leaves, which send up three- or four- 
finger-high stems, each carrying a close cluster of white flowers, almost 
sitting ina bunch. (Annual.) A. albana, of lists, may be anything. 
A. alpina takes us into very different country and kindred. For this 
is A. glacialis of later authorities—the royal rose-pink splendour of 
the highest alpine shingles that makes Silene acaulis appear by com- 
parison so shrill a vulgarian in colour and habit. A. alpina, though 
an Aretia, is not a rock-plant, nor a dense tight tuft. It inhabits the 
whole alpine chain of Central Europe at great elevations, and always 
upon non-calecareous rock (this seems to be an absolute rule); here, 
in fine detritus of the topmost slopes, moist with the melting snows 
percolating beneath, the Androsace achieves in pink what Eritrichium 
achieves in blue, but forming much wider looser mats, often a foot 
across, of softly downy, leafy shoots, ending in tiny rosettes, which 
are hidden from sight in summer by an unbroken sheet of colour so 
pure and soft and soothing in the gentle yet startling clarity of its 
pink that I know of no other alpine colour or show to equal it. Nor 
is it any anguish to collect, like its kin, but comes up from its loose 
shingles with a tidy wet wad of roots that seems to promise success 
in cultivation. And, in point of fact, A. alpina is by no means hard 
to grow, in a loose rich mixture of sandy peat and chips and leaf- 
mould and grit. If water can be arranged to trickle through the bed 
about 12 inches below the surface, all through the summer, so much the 
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