DRABA. 
D. cantabrica, W. iX., from limestone crevices in Navarre, &c., may 
be known from D. aeizoeides in having downy, not hairless, stems, paler 
flowers, broader petals, and leaves longer and more drawn out (nothing 
could vary more in all these respects than D. aeizoeides itself, but the 
bald stem is an essential diagnostic in all forms of D. aeizoeides). 
D. compacta. See under D, aeizoon. 
D. cretica is entirely confined to one or two mountain tops of 
Crete. This is a little spine-edged, broadish-leaved mass almost as 
close and wee as an Aretian Androsace, with yellow blossoms that hardly 
rise above the clump, until their starry-haired stems have towered 
to the height of perhaps half an inch (in the case of a giant), to carry 
the four or five fat oval-pointed pods, downy and comfortable-look- 
ing in a coat of starry hairs. 
D. cuspidata may always be known from D. aeizoeides by the downy 
stems, by the tight and never relaxing clumps of its rosettes, by a 
toothing at the point of its beard-tipped leaves, by its wider flower- 
head, and by its bigger pod, not veined, but a-bristle with stiff hairs, 
instead of being smooth and bald as in every form of D. aeizoeides. 
(Eastern Alps, &c.) 
D. Dedeana is a most important Spanish species with two varieties 
even more remarkable than itself. It isa dense massed tuft of rosettes 
at the end of bare branches on the ground, these rosettes being made 
up of very lightly overlapping little leaves, oblong-blunt and narrow, 
clothed at the end in the characteristic stiff white bristles of the group. 
But the flowers break clean away from it, for they are of pure snowy 
or creamy whiteness, instead of the otherwise unvarying yellow of 
this section, rising up in heads, at the top of the 3-inch stems, and 
fine and large and beautiful into the bargain. D. Mawit, of gardens, 
is merely a form of this, and a form with smaller, fewer blossoms and 
narrower foliage, though endowed with green sepals. And yet more 
important is the second variety, D. D. Zapateri. This is a delightful 
thing from shady places in the Jurassic rocks of Aragon, and abundant 
on the hills of Albarracin. It forms the typical dense matting mass, 
with leaves of brilliant green, very close-set in the packed columnar 
rosettes ; and the inner ones curve inwards, while the outer ones tend 
to spread or reflex. The stems are half an inch or even an inch and a 
half high, and the flowers in their loose dome are always pure bright 
white with a golden set of anthers, and often a purple calyx, the whole 
plant being clothed in a soft down. 
D. dicranoeides (Boiss. and Huet.)=D. rigida, q.v. 
D. glacialis almost approaches the next section, and is a copy 
of D. alpina in general appearance—a neat mass, emitting a 
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