ARENARIA. 
and the much rarer and neater Arctic species, A. alpina, may be 
planted, for their interest, in heathy open peat-beds, to serve as a 
cover for daffodils or other bulbs. 
Arenaria. See also under Alsine. 
A. acerosa is a most lovely treasure, neat and tiny, with rosettes 
like those of A. Ledebouriana, which it closely resembles, but the stems 
do not branch, and the snowy stars are twice as big, on shorter 
foot-stalks. Its home is in the Aips of Lycia and Anatolia; it should 
prove a jewel of the first water for choice banks or moraines. 
A. aequicaulis is very near Alsine verna, but here the leaves are 
sticky. 
A. armeniaca makes a mass of 6-inch shoots, above a mass of 
longish grassy leaves, and with flowers gathered into tight round 
heads like a nut. As a rule these cluster-headed Arenarias are 
rather dull and dowdy, therefore let us deal with them here compend- 
iously, and be done. Of similar persuasion, then—fitted, at pleasure, 
to make mats of fine grassy turf, but inconsiderable in bloom 
—are A. dianthoeides, A. graminea, A. graminifolia, A. scariosa, 
A. Steveniana, A. rigida, A. blepharophylla, A. pungens, A. capitata, 
A. holostea (with flowers twice the size, however, of those of A. 
rigida), A. caricifolia (with grassy leaves often 12 inches long, and 
short many-flowered heads of blossom twice as big as usual), 
A. festucoeides, A. Griffithii, A. gypsophiloeides, A. polycnemifolia, 
A. Hookeri, and A. isaurica. 
A. Armeriastrum, a most variable species, from high elevations in 
the limiest mountains of Granada. It forms a close tuffet, with dense 
terminal heads of flower. Some of its varieties are A. A. elongata, 
A. A. frigida (a very much condensed form), and A. A. caesia, which is 
loose and grey. 
A. balearica, the indestructible rock-sheeting Arenaria of the 
Balearic Islands, which in any cool place and in many sunny ones 
becomes the most beautiful of terrible weeds, wrapping everything in 
its minute but undivorceable embrace, and covering the yards it has 
occupied with countless galaxies of clear white stars on tiny stems of 
half an inch or so. It should never be admitted even within seeding 
distance of anything choice or precious, otherwise the gardener’s 
time is taken up for evermore with clearing the latter anew every day 
from the octopus-like attentions of the Arenaria. But for wild rocks, 
walks, walls, and cliffs there is nothing more precious and beautiful. 
A. caespitosa. See under Sagina. 
A. ciliata is the type from which diverges A. gothica, q.v. 
A. ciliolata, a high-alpine from Sikkim, is a lax and hairy little 
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