DIANTHUS. 
Scardus, after the habit of D. microlepis, forming a dense floor of 
flopping stems, 2 or 3 inches long, densely set with overlapping blunt 
little narrow short leaves to the very tip, each leaf having three fat 
nerves, of which the two outer ones run along the rims, so as to make 
them seem especially thick. The flowers are pink, with obovate 
scalloped petals. And there is a form D. m. oxylepis, in which they 
are narrower and more star-like. 
D. nazaraeus, from Gargaros, is not unlike a branching D. sil- 
vestris, with solitary pink blossoms, and six teeth to each petal. 
D. neglectus, however ill-fitting its name, cannot be merged into 
the dim title of D. alpester by any gardener who rightly values those 
round great concise tufts of grass that it makes, beset all over with 
those enormous cheery round faces of the most brilliant cherry-rose, 
with a blue eye and a buff reverse. It is a treasure, too, of the most 
indestructible vigour and permanence, taproot and tufted habit and 
all. Get it into poorish deep soil in full sun, and its massive circles will 
yearly increase, and with them will increase the profusion of its 
blossom, not only in the heyday of June, just after those of D. alpinus, 
but again (and hardly less splendidly) in autumn, glorifying late 
August and September. It is a plant, in nature, obviously lime- 
hating, but not so completely so as D. glacialis. Even in nature, 
however, it may be found (though less violently happy) on more 
calcareous soils, as for instance, but rarely, on the gypsum downs of 
the Mont Cenis ; while on the granites and schists above it runs riot 
even in the rough grass (though not in the roughest)—a species of the 
coarse alpine turf, and, on the Mont Cenis in August, attempting a 
race of prodigality in rose and violet with the clumped purple suns of 
Aster alpinus, in colonies and sheets of interwoven colour among the 
fading wreckage of Orchis sambucina and Anemone Halleri; or else, 
a little higher, all by itself in finer grass, fringing the Vaccinium 
bushes with blots of rose, and erupting on the embankments of the 
track itself, or close beside the age-trodden windings of the great 
highroad. A little further, though, towards the alpine heights, and 
it takes the most beautiful alpine developments, both on the Mont 
Cenis, for instance, and high on the Cottians, growing into neat tiny 
tufts of finest lawn-grass, as close as those of D. microlepis, but that 
the stemless flowers are typically ample and brilliant, never growing 
up on taller stalks; not even in seed, for the pods of the past may be 
found sitting as tight to the tuft as the flowers of the present. These 
beautiful dazzling dwarfs remain constant, too, in cultivation, though 
asking for moraine that their fullest beauty may be enhanced. In 
the Southern ranges the species tends to become a trifle more leggy, 
292 
