DAPHNE. 
D. jasminea, in the rocks of Parnassus and Euboea, claims twin- 
ship with D. petraea. For it makes the same minute and prostrate 
mat of twisting brittle branches, set with very tiny, oval spoon-shaped 
leaves, sitting tight to the depressed compacted shoots, and of a blue- 
grey tone that beautifully enhances the beauty of the two or three 
waxen trumpets in which each of those shoots terminates—delicate 
sweet tubes of pink outside, and four-pointed stars of white as they 
open. So dense and complicated is the habit of D. jasminea that it 
ends by being almost spiky, spreading out exactly like a mass of Salix 
herbacea among the stones, and blossoming with equal zeal in spring 
and autumn. At present we hold out our hands for it in vain. 
D. petraea dwells high and far in the Southern Alps, confined to one 
small district, and there haunting hot and terrible cliff-faces of rose- 
grey limestone fronting the full radiance of the Italian sun. In the 
tightest crevices of the rock it grows, in chinks so close that the point 
of a pin will hardly enter; yet there the Daphne roots deep down into 
nothing, sending its fat masses of yellow rootage browsing far in, 
with only the lime of the rock to feed them; but so the neck grows 
thick and stout, emitting a mass of tiny branches, clothed in tiny oval 
leaves, grooved and dark green and glossy. Thus the plant develops, 
and its twigs lie close and flat against the sheer cliff which, as far up 
as you can see, is plastered with those mats of lucent green darkness, 
until at last they turn to mats and splashes of even more lucent rose, 
when every one of those shoots is ablaze with a head of three or four 
big waxy pink tubes of the most crystalline pure texture, the most 
brilliant clear colour, and the most intoxicating fragrance. The 
flowers begin in June and continue through August ; the sight of those 
sheer awiul faces blotted with scabs of living pink flat to the cliff and 
unbroken by any touch of green is one that amply repays the distance, 
difficulties, dangers, and despairs that sometimes wait on the worshipper 
of D. petraea. For the Daphne grows only in the most adamantine 
faces, and only long sedulous search (by very superior persons) may 
produce here and there a tuft from milder places; while in the rock it is 
brittle at the neck,and snaps sharpoff at an irreverent touch. Seedlings 
indeed do occur, but seem of the utmost rarity ; I have never yet seen 
sign of berry on the plants. Yet seed they do and must, for reasons 
to be more fully stated below, but in the cliff their increase is chiefly 
by a thready runner breaking along the crevice and erupting out of 
the blank wall again into what soon proves another tight flat huddle 
of sweetness and light. In cultivation D. petraea has no unwillingness 
either about growing or flowering. Collected pieces, however, usually 
having lost some of their substance, need time to form fresh rootage 
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