LINUM. 
ordinary herbaceous tendencies, and the other a definite shrub of 
about three times the size. There is also a beautiful alpine form of 
L. arboreum, most charmingly neat and dwarf and compact. 
L. aretioeides is perhaps the most to be desired of all. It makes 
a quite tight small mass of leafage, narrow, fine, frail, and huddled so 
that the whole looks exactly like a cushion of Douglasia Vitaliana ; in 
which, however, sit stemless the flaming cups of gold, each by itself, 
as the similar cushion of Geranium nivale is set with open white goblets 
of the same shape, and those of Convolvulus nitidus with pink. This 
lovely jewel belongs to the high mountain region of Cadmus in Caria, 
and Tmolus in Lydia. | 
L. arkansanum is about 8 inches high, with sprays of large yellow 
flowers with a pink base. 
L. austriacum replaces L. alpinum in the Southern ranges, and 
may be seen in the upper turf of Baldo or the Cima Tombea. It is 
near L. perenne, and generally like the other, but a far more beautiful 
thing, less despondent in its habit, with fine stems that stand up about 
6 inches or less (much more in the garden) and proudly wave their 
blossoms of a blue rich and clear as a Gentian’s, softer in note and yet 
with something not unlike that peculiar coerulean effulgence. Its 
colour and charm set it supreme over the other well-known blue 
Linums, and in cultivation it does as well as the best. 
L. Balansae lives in the wild hills of Cappadocia, and is 6 inches or 
a foot tall, with blooms as in L. flavum, but that heré they are of rich 
orange with a dark eye, while the leaves on the stems are rather 
shorter and broader. 
L. campanulatum belongs to L. flavum (q.v.). 
L. capitatum, from Southern Europe and the Levant, is akin to 
L. flavum, but with the flowers in a closer head. 
L. carnosulum may be pictured in all its loveliness by saying that it - 
is a tight cushion 2 inches high, with azure flowers like those of L. 
austriacum, of which the plant is a close and compacted miniature 
(thus giving a blue companion to the picture of L. aretioeides and its 
yellow tussocks), but that the foliage is fleshy and not pointed, and 
densely huddled, while the fruiting capsule is not round nor borne 
upright. From the stony places of Lebanon, above the Cedars ; 
among the dioritic screes and sandy shingles of the Cilician Taurus, 
high up, there is a form of this, L. c. empetrifoliwm, which is a tighter 
cushion still, with leaves yet more densely overlapping and serried. 
L. compactum is a densely crowded American cushion-species, with 
yellowish creamy flowers, the whole being about 2 inches high. 
L. elegans is quite near L. arboreum, but differs in having narrower, 
454 
