HYPERICUM. 
Its erect and typically unbranched stems of some 8 inches are grooved 
in two lines, and set with smooth small leathery leafage, blunted and 
narrowish, rolled over at the edge; the shoots end in a long narrow 
spire of bright blossoms. It also, in the axils of the stem, produces 
fluffy-looking little tufts that seem like bundles of leaves, but are in 
reality branchlings minutely condensed into a ball of foliage. Its range 
is from the far West to the far East of the Mediterranean region; so that 
in this distribution it varies widely, and many of the forms are often 
offered as species. Among these are H. h. lydiwm, which is paler-green, 
sometimes branching, and with the sterile shoots more laxly set with 
leaves, and its flower-sprays bearing some seven blooms or so. Thisoccu- 
pies dry mountain-copses from Antilibanus away into Russian Armenia, 
and its taller forms approach that of the European typical H. hyssopi- 
folium. H.h. latifolium suggests H. elongatum, but here the leaves 
are rather broader, and not curled at the edge. (Cilicia.) Especially fine 
is H. h. lythrifolium, which is a condensed alpine form from the Cilician 
Taurus, &c., with short stout stems very densely furnished with over- 
lapping little leaves, and flowers larger and finer than even in the type— 
a glory which does not belong to H.h. microcalycinum from Lycaonia. 
But Spain produces one variety of special merit in the ample-sheaved 
H. h. callithyrsum. 
H. japonicum, an inferior-flowered H. humifusum, cleaving to the 
ground, poor in blossom, and annual or biennial in character. (Quite a 
different species is sold falsely under this name. See H. erectum.) 
K. kamtchaticum, an erect leafy weed of no value. 
H. Kotschyanum grows about 6 or 8 inches high, and the whole mass 
is velvety with a short hoar of hair; the round stem is set with flat 
little oblong blunt leaves, which are most densely rolled together on 
the axillary sprays. The flowers are borne in short oblong panicles, 
two or three to a shoot, and with the petals markedly narrowing to 
the base. (Alpine limestones of Syria and the Cilician Taurus.) 
H. lanuginosum comes from damp and shady places on the coasts 
of Syria, and may be known by the densely woolly ccat in which its 
inch-long stem-embracing leaves are clad. The stems are half a foot 
to a foot high, with panicles of blossom, and there is a variety H. 1. 
gracile. 
H. latifolium. See under H. hyssopifolium. 
H., leprosum makes fine delicate stems of 3 or 4 inches, and earns 
its displeasing epithet by being leprous with tubercular warts. The 
flowers are rather smaller than in H. origanifolium, and the plant 
comes from the rocky places of Caria, where it develops into two 
varieties, H. 1. Bourgaei and H. 1. rigidulum. 
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