ERODIUM. 
shaped in outline, feathered and re-feathered into jags more or less 
untoothed at the edge, and rather broad and bluntish. The blossoms 
in their loose heads are nearly an inch wide, white or purple, with the 
two upper petals smaller than the rest, and with a deep blotch of colour 
at their base. (Alps of the Cilician Taurus, &c.) H.c. micropetalum is 
a smailer-flowered white form. 
E. chrysanthum is a very famous and coveted species, one of the 
finest and most distinct, rejoicing also in the synonym of E. absin- 
thoeides (Sibth. and Sm.). It makes a specially beautiful wide tuft 
of feathered silver-gleaming leaves, gathered and crumpled most 
daintily, soft and velvety to the touch as to the eye; it then sends up 
the branching stems with here and there a small leaf, carrying heads 
of large blossoms in the most delicate sulphur-yellow, shining clear 
and pale above the spraying tuffets of that plumy silver foliag>. 
It belongs only to the high mountain region of Parnassus, Kyllene, 
Taygetos, &c., and is the only one of its race to be a trifle capricious 
in some gardens, though really trustworthy and safe enough if only 
its corner be sufficiently sunny and its deep light soil perfectly drained, 
so that the trunk is secure against excessive wet in winter. It also varies 
in the amount of silver on the leaves, and a batch of seedlings will yield 
many degrees of beauty in this respect, and will also yield varieties of 
sex that help to explain the comparative rarity of the plant in culti- 
vation. For it believes fatally in the separation of the sexes. One 
tuft bears only male flowers, another only female ; unless you can have 
two such masses growing and flowering side by side, you will never get 
pregnant seed of the Erodium. On the other hand, if you do, such 
seed will germinate readily, and make good progress. Of the two sexes 
it is murmured that while the male probably is pre-eminent in the 
manly qualities of sober solidity, the female has the advantage in 
outward glitter and size and show. 
E. Guiceiardi ; almost shrubby, with stems dividing into two equal 
branches and usually almost hidden among the basal leaves. These 
spring in lavish numbers from the stock,on stems as long as themselves; : 
they are clothed in fine silky wool, and the strips into which they are 
feathered are narrow and rather pointed. It is a plant all gleaming 
with flat silver, about 6 or 8 inches high, with pink flowers of equal 
petals, and in size like those of EZ, chrysanthum, carried in loose heads 
of from four to seven, rather lost amid the excessive masses of the 
foliage. (Northern Greece.) 
E. leucanthum is only about 6 inches high in all, with leaves cut 
into the very finest and most delicate of strips, and entirely clothed in 
short glandular hairs. The blossoms in their heads have equal petals 
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