GYPSOPHILA. 
G. glauca is found in the screes of Kasbek, and is like G. repens 
but that the whole blue-grey little plant is clothed in glands. 
G. libanotica is rather larger, attaining even to a foot, but none the 
less attractive, with small stiff fleshy leaves of blue-grey, set on the 
countless stems of 6 or i2 inches, burdened with their spattering 
showers of large pink stars that may be seen in the highest cliffs of 
Lebanon and Cappadocia. (G. curvifolia is near this, but a foot and 
a half high, with purple blossom.) 
G. microphylla is a yet minuter flat sheet than G. frankenioeides, 
still more like a Frankenia. (Alps of Alatau.) 
G. nana forms close cushions in the high rocks of Greece, and is 
then set with pink flowers as big as those of G. repens, often sitting 
singly on stems that hardly emerge ai all from the cushion of colour. 
G. ortegioeides is also Tunica xylorrhiza ; no bad companion for 
T. Saxifraga, which it exacily recalls in habit and spraying fine grace, 
and copiousness of pretty blossom; but the plant is hairy, it has a 
woodyish stock, and the flowers are white with veins of red. (Cappa- 
docia.) 
G. petraea is a creeping running species from Alatau, very branching 
and leafy, with many very narrow leaves; and then terminal sprays 
of blossom, whose fruiting heads ultimately turn downwards on their 
stems. The flowers are described by authority as varying from pink 
to blue. «Credat Judaeus Apella”’ for the present ; blue is a colour 
hardly treated by authorities, who seem to think it a kind of charity- 
word to cover many sins. When in doubt, say blue, seems their 
motto ; I have known Sawzifraga florulenta described as blue, to say 
nothing of Androsace alpina, that pinkest of all pinks that blush on 
the cheek of the world. 
G. repens is the universal beautiful Gypsophila of all the stony open 
places and banks in the Alps, and a species of no less beauty and value 
in the garden as well, making mounds and long dense curtains of 
foliage from a ledge, surfy with sprays of rosy or pearly white all 
through the summer. There are forms to be found on the hills: 
whites and pinks of exceptional brilliance or size of blossom; the 
variety G. monstrosa is a hybrid with G. Steveni—a thing of amazing 
floriferousness and beauty, but in habit of flower more branching, and 
more Tunica-like in the profusion of its 6-inch fine sprays of flower 
that make a mass a yard across; whereas typical G. repens continues 
steadily on its forward downward way, throwing up its not-quite- 
so-abundant showers of bloom on stems that are not so freely branchy 
as those of the hybrid—which it was indeed unfair to label with a name 
so ominous and so suggestive of duplicity. Both are indestructible. 
405 
