ARENARIA. 
plant with fine fringed leaves, oblong egg-shaped, and large flowers 
sitting almost huddled upon them on stems of half an inch. 
A. confusa (A. congesta of some authors) belongs to the American 
group of Cluster-heads ; under which lead here follow A. Fendleri (with 
pallid yellowy flowers), A. T’weedyi, A. Hookeri, and A. uintahensis. 
A. cretica makes dense tufts, akin to those of A. gracilis, but with 
larger flowers, one to three on their stems, above the stiff little oblong 
egg-shaped minute leaves, blunt and hairless. (From the rocks of 
Crete.) 
A. cucubaloeides is a grassy mat of great value, from Turkish 
Armenia, even if it did not send up flowers so fine and ample, like 
those of Linum tenuifoliuwm, carried in loose showers of from five to 
thirteen, on stems of a foot or 18 inches in height. 
A. drypidea makes a 3-inch tuffet of glaucous-grey fine foliage 
smooth and pointed, but not prickly. It emits no leafy barren 
shoots, but sends up a spray of 6 inches carrying several blooms. 
A. erinacea forms minute blue-grey scabs upon the high lime- 
stones of Leon and Granada, the tiny little leaves being packed as 
it were into four rows on the shoots, quite minute and pointed, with 
the white blossoms sitting close on the lichen-like mass. 
A. foliosa, from India, is a close copy of Alsine juniperina. See 
under Alsine Villarsii for the picture of both. 
A. formosa has very handsome flowers, loosely carried on thread- 
like erect stems above a freely branching mass of shoots, clothed in 
fleshy foliage perfectly smooth and hairless. (Altai.) 
A. glandulifera is a diminished and densely glandular version of 
A. ciliolata, with Ciliolata’s long flexing hairs, and with flowers much 
smaller. 
A. gothica, a form or sub-species emerging from A. ciliata, but much 
more charming, and differing in its prostrate habit from the kindred 
A. norvegica (also, like both these last, an extremely rare native of 
Great Britain). A. gothica is a quite tiny plant, with shoots not more 
than an inch long or so, lying upon the ground, and set with pairs of 
glossy little oval leaves, dark-green and fat-looking. The flowers are 
borne all through the summer, lying here and there on the tuft, and 
are large for so minute a thing, of a clear and solid white. It is so 
that A. gothica, one of our rarest species (if truly English indeed it be), 
can be seen in a few places of limestone débris and very fine sparse 
grass, at intervals along the upper limestone level on the eastern slope 
of Ingleborough. But in cultivation, though always more or less 
perennial, the stems may grow more erect, and its blossoms seem to 
dwindle and turn inconspicuous if subjected to the Capuan influences 
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germ: 
