AUBRIETIA. 
confused in some gardens with A. gracilis, and in others with the larger 
and stouter A. helleborifola. And there are various other species 
still, in this kind, from various parts of the Alps, all pretty and easy, 
but not especially distinct in value for the garden that already rejoices 
in major, minor, gracilis, and helleborifolia—major and_hellebori- 
folia being plants for open and crowded meadowy places, while 
gracilis and minor will grace the choicest bank in cool soil and 
shade. 
A. gracilis, very abundant in similar places, even down to the road- 
sides, in the Karawanken, is a trifle larger and more solid than A. 
minor, but inspired with no less striking an air of breeding and grace. 
In cultivation it answers to the same treatment; and, indeed, all the 
Astrantias are of the easiest culture in any open cool loam. 
A. helleborifolia, with A. maxima, A. heterophylla, and A. caucasica, 
are others from Eastern regions; A. helleborifolia having the lower 
leaves cut finger-wise, into three fat broad lobes which are not cleft 
again. These are found in grassy places all through the Caucasus. 
A. major is abundant in the sub-alpine fields of the main European 
ranges. Inclining to be large, its best place in cultivation is in some 
sub-alpine piece of herbage, with Trollius, Geranium sylvaticum, 
Campanula rotundifolia, Paradisea Liliastrum, and others of its old 
friends and neighbours. Here it thrives happily for ever, and looks 
at home with its comely green ranunculoid foliage and stems of big 
greenish-pink bracty stars. 
A. minor is quite a different little beauty, which does not seem to 
attract the general eye, though to my own it is especially delightful. 
For it is of very delicate habit—a slight tuft of dark-green finely-cleft 
leaves, well above which, all the summer through, aspire loose dainty 
sheaves of fairy-like ivory stars, filled with the spidery whiteness of 
the genuine flowers. This dainty forest clf dwells in the mossy 
rocks and woodland places of the alpine chains, alike on lime (in the 
Bernese Oberland) or on granite (in the Maritime Alps). In any 
case it makes no difficulty about growing finely in England, in any 
cool, deep, moist soil, whether calcareous or not, in a sheltered and 
shady position. 
Atraphaxis form a small group of bushling Polygonads, tufted or 
ramping, with flowers of bright cr paler pink in little bunches. But 
the race is purely Southern, and demands intense heat and drought on 
the rock-work, so that it cannot really be called suitable to our more 
temperate climate. 
Aubrietia makes almost the only exception to the rule that 
prescribes true species for the rock-garden, rather than their improved 
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