ANDROSACE. 
better for the vigour of the Androsace, though it must, of course, be 
turned off at the end of October and the plant kept dry. If such 
care be too elaborate, a flower-pot or drain-pipe, driven deep into the 
earth near the plant, and periodically filled with water, will have the 
desired effect. But in flower it is too rarely that A. alpina remembers 
its splendour of the hills; a dozen pallid pink stars, if you are lucky, 
sprinkle the surface of the mat, instead of concealing it with a dense 
overlapping crowd of ample glowing rosy beauties, radiant and golden- 
eyed in the alpine air. It is curious, however, that in the Dolomites, 
where the plant is found on volcanic outcrops, it develops into a 
strangely different form, usually inhabiting hard rock, and with 
flowers invariably of pure white, which very, very rarely seem to 
fade into a pale pink. Nor are they so free and large, nor the 
cushion so wide and hearty, as in the glacial regions of Switzerland, 
where A. alpina is one of the few species that there reach their 
most brilliant development. 
A. arachnoidea. See under A. villosa. 
A. arctica, from the Behring Straits, is a most minute and densely- 
tufted Aretia, densely downy, not yet introduced into cultivation. 
A. x aretioeides, known to but few, is a natural hybrid between 
A. alpina and A. obtusifolia. At the same time it is not uncommon in 
districts affected by its parents, and should be looked out for by 
travellers in the Oberland and Valais, as for instance on the Riffel, on 
the Albula, and behind the hotel on the Torrenthorn. It is a very 
pretty little plant, forming neat tufts of two or three clustered rosettes 
of bluntish leaves, downy with tiny starry hairs. These tufts send 
up a number of neat bare stems, hardly an inch or two high, carrying 
sometimes one pink flower, but more often a rayed head. A. Briiggeri 
is probably another name for this charming cross. 
A. brigantiaca. See under A. carnea. 
A. bryomorpha is an Aretia from the Pamir, suggesting A. helvetica, 
but with looser and more columnar tuffets, and narrower leaves quite 
smooth except for a fine fringe of hairs. The flowers are pale pink, 
and the clump’s baldness offers us good hope that it may prove 
tolerant of our conditions. It has the short corolla of Androsace, but 
otherwise suggests the habit of the nearly allied Dionysias, an almost 
unknown race of alpine Aretias, particularly beautiful, from the high 
Alps of Persia. 
A. caespitosa is the one true Androsace we could have from Persia, 
if indeed the plant be truly reported thence; which is doubtful, — 
seeing that its only other stations are far away in the clifis of Eastern 
Siberia. It is a true and tight Aretia, with very narrow little leaves, 
43 5, 
