APHYLLANTHES MONSPELIENSIS. 
A. molle is a most frail grower, not glandular, but white with soft 
hairs. It haunts the warm crevices of Catalonia, from which it 
weakly flops with long stems, and their boughs are beset with very 
small roundish hoary-white foliage. The blooms are large, thickly 
fluffy outside, white also, with a yellow palate and the upper lip 
streaked with red. They are carried in short lax spikes, or are 
sometimes almost solitary. 
A. sempervirens is yet another frail and prostrate species, with 
intricate branches not more than 8 inches or so in length, minutely 
downy. The leaves are opposite to each other, evergreen, narrow-oval 
and downy as the sprays. The flowers are produced from the upper 
axils on laxish shoots opposite like the leaves. In size they are only 
half those of A. molle, whitish and lilac-striped, with a yellow palate. 
(Rocks of the Pyrenees.) It may be quite easily told from A. 
glutinosum, which, inter alia, is almost a woody wiry mass, densely 
sticky, and not evergreen. Both are in cultivation, and succeed 
well; there seems to be no reason why we should go on lacking 
A. molle and A. Charidemii. 
Aphyllanthes monspeliensis forms a clan all to its lone self 
among the Lilies. It makes wide semicircular masses—for so it goes 
on spreading fanwise from its start—of tapering stems exactly like those 
of a glaucous-grey Rush. There is nothing more by way of foliage 
than these waving or flopping tangles of Rush-like stems. And then, 
in early summer, a certain number of these erupt at the tip into a 
small brown sheath, still more like that of a wizened Rush. But from 
this unpromising chaff there suddenly emerges a beautiful six-rayed 
star of delicate blue. Aphyllanthes is a most interesting monotype ; 
it crosses from North Africa and occurs in Spain, then ranges all 
along most of the Franco-Italian Riviera, appearing quite sporadically 
but in generous abundance. It is curiously local, and its wide colonies 
cease abruptly and unexpectedly. It may be seen here and there 
throughout the heathery tract between Cannes and Grasse; and, 
beyond Turbia, may be found profuse in a very hard, close and 
clammy yellow loam. It makes wide inextricable mats of specially 
long tough roots, anchoring itself a thousand times to its soil; from 
which accordingly it is only extracted with great difficulty, a spade 
or a mattock being wanted to get up even a fragment of those vast 
and aged masses. This disturbance the plant resents; for it hates 
division, and in the garden should never be disturbed. However, 
when once re-established it is thoroughly easy and hardy, enjoying 
a deep, light, and rich soil. In nature it does not seem to like the 
full Mediterranean sun, but affects the shadier and cooler slopes; 
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