CERATOSTIGMA PLUMBAGINOEIDES. 
C. ovatum, prostrate, tufted and creeping, has narrow leaves at 
the base, and broad or egg-shaped pointed ones on the stem. The 
blooms are few, with ample petals just notched and heart-shaped at 
the end, not cleft. It differs, among other points, from the rather 
viscid C. latifoliwm, to which it stands close, in carrying the fruiting 
heads spreading and erect, whereas in all forms of C. latifolium they 
turn earthward. 
C. purpurascens comes from the Caucasus—a tufted species of 
variable height, with large flowers, and downy leaves with jointed 
hairs. (Its purpleness lies in general tone, not in any change from 
the white blossoms of the family.) 
C. repens of our gardens is certainly not a synonym of C. Bieber- 
steinit, which should be more or less woolly-white, whereas C. repens 
forms mats of fine narrow foliage which is perfectly green, sending 
up loose stems of blossom fine and white indeed, but of no remarkable 
brilliancy. The plant is, too, a weed of the most uncontrollable kind, 
and should never be admitted within sight of anything choice, or ever 
into valuable corners of the garden, any more than C. grandiflorum. 
C. speciosum ; a variety of C. grandiflorum, g.v. There are many 
other chickweeds rather more or less fitted for culture, but as a 
rule rather less than more; all flower in summer, and all must be 
dealt with cautiously even among these quoted, lest you come bitterly 
to regret having admitted a voracious cuckoo into the midst of your 
neat nest and its delicate nurslings, whom soon the overgrown intruder 
will hustle into the outer darkness of death. 
C. Thomasii (C. Soleirolii) forms a tight lawn of dense ovate grey 
foliage, glandular and stickyish and downy, which throws up sprays 
of from one to three handsome white blooms. (from the high Alps 
of Corsica.) 
C. tomentosum, the universal grey-white chickweed used for edging, 
is fitted for wild uses onlyin the garden, being of growth so irrepressible, 
and neither in colour nor in size of flower so brilliant as C. Boissieri 
and C. Biebersteinit. 
Ceratostigma plumbaginoeides is that lovely plant of the 
Plumbaginous persuasion which fills some warm corner in light soil 
with a mass of leafy shoots, and in the early days of autumn breaks 
out into heads of large stars in the most dazzling deep azure blue. 
It used to be called Plumbago Larpentae, and as such has a place in 
every garden, or ought to, running about underground, and rapidly 
increasing if the soil and the situation are warm. It is a perfectly 
hardy Chinese species: the new C. Willmoitianum is no improvement. 
C. Griffithii, however, from 8000 feet in Bhotan, ought to give better 
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