ANDROSACE. 
A. Reverchonit. See A. carnea, of which it is a later and inadmis- 
sible synonym. 
A. sarmentosa needs no description, for every warm sandy loam 
and every decent moraine rejoices in its widely-ramifying masses of 
ample tidy tufts, silvery at first, and then smoothly green; no less 
than in those numerous heads of soft pinky Verbenas that come so 
stalwartly and freely up on 6-inch hairy stems in early summer. The 
type, in the course of its distribution through all the ranges from 
Himalaya to Szechuan, takes occasion to vary greatly, and among the 
varieties three have been named and are sometimes offered as separate 
species. A. sarmentosa var. Watkinsit is a much smaller condensed 
form, with tighter rosettes about a fifth of sarmentosa’s; another 
diminished version, but not so distinct or small, is A. s. ywnnanensis ; 
while the best known and most beautiful of all holds a median place 
between these two, and is A. sarmentosa var. Chumbyi (A. Chumbyi 
of catalogues)—a neat compact and dainty thing, densely silky, and 
with flowers much more glowing than those of the type, and of the 
same size, but carried more freely and on stems of only 3 or 4 inches. 
This treasure is as perfectly easy as the rest, but its beauty well 
repays choice places and the select moraine, or other chosen corners 
too fine for the robustious and invasive cheeriness of A. sarmentosa, 
which is such that there are rumours of a garden on the warm coast of 
Lancashire, where the plant (being then little known) was ignorantly 
tucked into a rose-bed many years ago, and liked that inauspicious 
situation so well that for many years this noble Himalayan alpine has 
gone on acting as a covert to those succulent and sybaritic growths, 
as if it were the commonest of weeds in the way of Viola or Cerastium. 
A. selago is a charming Aretia from great elevations in mid-Hima-. 
laya. It forms especially tight dense tufts of very minute triangular 
blunt leaves fluffed at the edge and green when young (before age 
darkens them all), packed and squeezed together into impenetrable 
globules not an eighth of an inch through. The handsome big blossoms 
are bright rose-purple, carried aloft singly on fluffy stems of varying 
length, hardly ever exceeding an inch or so, and often almost 
imperceptible. We pine as yet in vain for A. selago. 
A. sempervivoeides (often offered too as A. primuloeides, from which 
it is wholly distinct) is a lovely member of the same sarmentosa 
group, running all over the surface of warm light soil or a moist 
moraine, with many beautiful and neat rosettes of fleshy oval leaves, 
densely overlapping, green, and perfectly smooth, except for a longish 
fringe of hair at their edge, which is frequently tinged with russet-red. 
Little bud-like promises of new rosettes come out upon the naked fat 
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