ANDROSACE. 
A. Harrissti, from Chitral, differs from all the other Asiatic Chamae- 
jasmes in having an almost lignescent stock and leaves entirely smooth. 
It branches about with twisting half-woody shoots like a Dionysia. 
The little leaves are fleshy, pale green, hairless, and rosetted so tightly 
as to pile up into a column of dead ones beneath the minute rosette of 
the current year, each leaf being about one-sixth of an inch long. The 
stems, again, are some half an inch high, from the end of each shoot, 
carrying a loose head of two to five white flowers, this many-flowered 
habit alone distinguishing it from the Aretias, which never have a stalk 
at all, or a bunch of flowers, but only single blooms, springing each by 
itself straight from the cushion, on a stem or peduncle of its own. 
A. Haussmannii is the special Aretia of the Dolomites, a very dis- 
tinct rare thing, forming larger or smaller tufts of loose and rather 
large flat rosettes, the leaves being comparatively long and narrow 
and splayed-out, almost hoar-frosted with glandular and starry 
microscopic hairs, till they take a note half metallic and half glaucous. 
In the middle of each tiny rosette lies a round bud like a dreaming 
pearl at dawn, just flushed with life; and this in due time develops 
a stem of about one-fifth of an inch, and opens into a rather thin and 
squinny white star, no proper fulfilment of the promises held out by 
that rosette and that bud. Pale pink is the official description of the 
blossoms, by the way, but they have invariably been whitish in my 
experience of the plant in its native places, where it haunts the walls 
and highest peaks of the Dolomites, especially in the Fassa district, 
descending upon the Antermoja Pass, and even seeding down into 
the shingles behind the Grasleiten Hut, where it grows into patches of 
rosettes far more ample than the wizen little clumps of one or two 
crowns that it makes in its native precipices. And on the other 
side, beyond the Antermoja Lake, there is a scree-slope where it grows 
like the commonest cruciferous weed, among jungles of -Papaver 
rhaeticum. In cultural needs A. Haussmannti follows A. helvetica, 
but clearly ought to require far less care, and should thrive freely in 
moraine, where its lovely leafage alone will make it welcome. 
A. hedraeantha is a beautiful Chamaejasme, coming between 
Duthieana and obtusifolia. It hails from the ranges of Rilo in the 
Balkans, and answers quite happily to cultivation either in the choice 
bed or in the moraine—a neat mass of bright green rosettes, with 
leathery blunt small leaves, perfectly smooth except for a most faint 
and minute fringe. The stems are notably short in stature, barely half 
an inch in height, each carrying from five to ten violet-rose flowers in 
a tight head. 
A. x Heeri takes us back into the Swiss Alps, where at one point in 
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