GERANIUM. 
it nestles in neat mats of very finely-divided foliage (all except the 
upper surface of the leaves being shimmering silver), set with staring 
wide flowers of soft lilac-blue, that sit in stemless loveliness close upon 
the cushion. 
G. argenteum is one of the loveliest things in nature, as you see 
the long grassy lawns along the crests of Monte Baldo all shimmering 
with the sheeted hoar-frost of its packed and glistering silver foliage, 
scattered over, up and down the green expanses, with great diaphanous 
dog-rose blossoms densely peppered over the ridges as if someone 
indeed had strewed pale little wild-roses across the lawn, for the 
passing of some heavenly bride. In gardens, however, this rare and 
most choice treasure (only to be met with here and there in the high 
warm turf of the Lombard limestones, Tyrol, Carinthia, the Apennines, 
and very rarely indeed in Dauphiné) grows with such an excessive 
willingness as to forget the hills and become fat, waxing into a tuft a 
foot across, and 6 inches high, instead of keeping the packed dwarfness 
of its mountain stature. In any case it is always of the rarest loveli- 
ness, and if it be specially desired to keep it dwarf, the plant can be 
restricted to meagre diet, in specially poor and stony soil. It may be 
propagated by seed and by fragments pulled off the crowns and struck 
as cuttings ; it usually sows itself freely in the garden. 
G. caespitosum makes many crowns, forming into clumps of fine 
leaves, and then emitting a number of stems about 5 inches high, 
carrying big flowers that vary in different shades of intense purple. 
(Wyoming, &c.) 
G. cinereum replaces G. argenteum in the Pyrenees, where the 
more beautiful species is not found. For G. cinerewm has not the 
neatness of habit, nor the argent foliage, nor the sweet pinky pallor of 
blossom, but is a little ampler, a little duller, a little larger and less 
fine in the foliage (which is ash-grey rather than silvery), a little taller 
in the 5-inch stems, and blunted in the tone of its big flowers, whose 
ground is of washed-out white, lined and flushed with dim claret-rose. 
A handsome, recommendable, and pleasant little Geranium, yet unwise 
in thus presuming to challenge comparison with the incomparable 
argenteum. There is, however, a white form, of a purity and brilliance 
and charm beyond all others, and, until G. argentewm has gone and 
done likewise, the honours almost remain with the white cinereum, 
which, however, does not breed true from seed, but produces all 
gradations of flush in its children, and hybridises with its wiehelle = 
G. argenteum, of the same blood, but different Alps. 
G. Fremontit.—This, as sent out, is a gawky and odious weed. But 
the true species should surely not be thus. It has many rounded, 
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