ARENARIA. 
A. Lessertiana makes a densely spiny mass of spreading prickly 
leaves, from which the stems rise erect, with large white blossoms 
carried often on specially long foot-stalks. There is a variety minor, 
much dwarfer, from greater elevations on the Persian Alps, where the 
type has its home. 
A. libanotica copies A. cretica, but is barely an inch high. 
A, lychnidea has short erect narrow leaves, and forms a dense 
tuffet on the cliffs of Ararat and Caucasus. The frail stems are some 
3 or 4 inches high, carrying from one to five large white flowers rather 
close together, as in Saxifraga Vandellit. 
A. macrantha, from the mountains of Colorado, likewise makes 
tuffets and has similar stems with fine white flowers according to its 
name. But here the tuffet is much laxer and more spreading; the 
plant is perfectly hairless and the leaves very narrow. 
A. melandryoeides may be found at about 15,000 feet in Sikkim. It 
is a loose species, not more than 2 or 4 inches high, with foliage almost 
fleshy, glandular on both sides, dull green or purplish. The blooms 
can be as much as an inch and a half across, really magnificent for the 
dwarf tuft. 
A. montana, with its huge sheets of egg-shaped greyish pointed 
leaves, falling so happily over any sunny rock in the garden, and 
covering itself in June with profusion of white flowers as big as a 
florin, is a species from rocky places all over the lower mountain 
region of Spain. It does not seed freely, as a rule, although so vast 
and robust and indispensable in cultivation. 
A. monticola forms beautiful glossy mats of bright green shining 
little stiff leaves with a stiff midrib, on the highest mountains of 
Sikkim and Tibet. And on these mats come sitting noble white 
blossoms of nearly an inch across. (Similar, but not so good, are A. 
pulvinaris, A. oreophila, A. globifera, and A. densissima.) 
A. musciformis, from the same region, answers to its name, and is 
like a wee moss-cushion, on which appear the narrow-petalled white 
flowers about a third of an inch in width. Quite similar is A. poly- 
trichoeides, with very dense stiff overlapping little leaves, forming 
bright green domes. 
A. Nuttallit (A. pungens of some authorities, but not of commerce 
or Willkomm.) is glandular-downy, with sharp leaves and many 
flowers in a loose scattering shower, on stems of some 3 to 6 inches. 
(From the La Plata mountains of Colorado.) 
A. picta, from Asia Minor, is a dainty little plant, looking like 
Tunica Saxifraga, and producing sprays of similar pink stars. 
A. pinifolia. See under Alsine pinifolia. 
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