DIANTHUS. 
D. speciosus is also D. grandiflorus, D. alpestris (Uecht), and D. 
Wimmert (Wichura): it is none the less a beautiful thing—a higher 
alpine development, standing towards D. superbus as does D. Stern- 
bergit (alpester) to D. monspessulanus, or Campanula Scheuchzeri to 
C. rotundifolia. It has handsome glaucous-blue foliage, and the 
erect stems carry one or two noble pink or deep rose flowers, intensely 
sweet, and very fringy, but not so much so as in D. superbus. (South 
Switzerland and Tyrol, in damp meadows between 5000 to 7500 
feet ; rare.) 
D. sphacioticus is a small loose mat from Crete with pale pink 
blooms on stems of 2 or 3 inches. 
D. spiculifolius of catalogues is but a dee of D. petraeus, 
not by any eyes to be distinguished, unless the flowers be perhaps a 
trifle larger, and perhaps more deeply fringed. 
D. squarrosus, from the sandy places of South Russia, is a general 
favourite in the garden. It makes mais of green rosettes, the leaves 
being narrow, stiff, grooved, pointed, and the outer ones recurving ; 
while the stems rise up about 9 or 12 inches, to carry some two or 
three, or only one, large white or pink blossom of an excessive fringiness, 
like a whirlwind of lace. There are other forms of this, including a 
D. s. nanus, of more compact habit, and more copious production 
of stems about 6 inches high. 
D. stenocephalus carries one or three whitish-grey blossoms in a 
cluster, and has little worth accordingly. 
D. Sternbergit should stand for the right name of the Alpester 
variety of D. monspessulanus—a most lovely delight, which may, for 
instance, be seen and smelt from afar in at least one fold of the long lime- 
stone screes that descend the pitiless flanks of Monte Baldo. For its 
fine growths run grass-like about among the stones, just as in 
D. monspessulanus, but the stems are only about 6 inches high, ap- 
pearing here and there in the scant green of the stone-slide ; and each 
only carries one single flower, and that, by comparison, of larger size, 
and, out of all comparison, of deeper, livelier colour—fringy great 
moths of vivid rose hovering airily over the greyness of the scree, and 
haunting the wide world with the deliciousness of its seent—so that if 
your fate leads you to descend the mountain in a mist, you know where 
you are at once upon its pathless slope by meeting the breath of the 
Dianthus rising up towards you like a helpful incense from ‘far down 
below in the gully by which your way should lead. 
JD. stramineus is, in its habit and flower, like a small D. fimbriatus, 
but that its whirligigs sit stemless to their loose spike, and should 
be of pale straw-yellow. 
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