ERINACEA PUNGENS. 
ending in a single broad white blossom. (From dry arid places in 
Wyoming.) 
Other names of Erigeron there are, in strings; but almost always, 
unless certainly described to the contrary, it can be taken that most 
of them are leafy and undistinguished weeds of rank growth, or else, 
if matted and alpine, have but the dingy stodgy little flowers of our 
own £. alpinus, with the densely-crowded rays of dullish pinky tone, 
quite inadequate in length for the fat yellow disk, from which they do 
not even try to open out into a star, but remain huddled and close 
and bunched up. The race, it will have been seen, is a very large 
one, alike in the Old World and the New; but, while many of the 
New World species are big and leafy things, either dowdy or splendid 
in flower, it is from the New World also that the more precious alpines 
come, almost without exception, the Alps of Europe and Asia having 
wholly refused to let Erigeron anywhere come into rivalry with 
Asters of the alpine group, and so have restricted the race to the 
decent poor-cousin dowdiness of #. alpinus (as you will often see it on 
the highest slopes standing duskily in the background of Aster 
Alpinus, and by its own dinginess supplying the most dutiful of foils), 
whereas in America, Aster is already so dominant and diverse and 
overwhelming that the hills no longer consider it unbecoming for 
Erigeron to make some show on its own. 
Erinacea pungens is so beautiful a little bush that no garden 
can lack it—a dense hedgehog of very long silver-green spines, about 
5 inches high and perhaps a foot across. From this, in due time, 
emerge a few inconspicuous leaves, and then in early summer a cluster 
of large pea-flowers of the most entrancing clear lavender-blue, pro- 
ceeding out of big baggy calyces all shaggy with silver fluff. This 
beautiful wee shrub, whose unfriendliness to the touch reserves such 
an amiable surprise for the eyes, is abundant on warm slopes and 
open earthy places, especially on the limestone, throughout the hills 
of Granada, Valencia, and South Catalonia, where it is known as the 
Piorno d’Azul or the Erizo. And notwithstanding its birthplace, 
Erinacea is perfectly hardy and happy into the farthest North in deep 
light soil, and in a hot exposure. It grows with decent slowness, but 
rooted fragments can occasionally be removed; and cuttings struck 
about midsummer and kept close for a while, develop readily into 
plants. Seed can, as a rule, only be got from its native land. 
Erinus, the Spring-flower ; who does not grow E. alpinus, with its 
rosy forms, and its lovely albino that comes true from seed and sows 
itself with all the profusion of the type? The only other species is 
E. hispanicus, sometimes called EH. hirsutus; this is a softer, laxer, 
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