MATTHIOLA. 
profuse spires of warm carmine through winter far on into the summer, 
so as hardly ever to be out of flower ; and will do as much from a warm 
dry crevice of the large rock-garden, but is far too big for the small. 
Ill-suited also is M. sinuata, but a different tale may be told of the 
smaller members of the family that have exactly the uses, needs, habit, 
and character of Hrysimum, but bloom later, as a rule, offering full 
joy of their display in summer. 
M., fenestralis is an erect sturdy thing from Crete, beginning with 
one stiff stout stem of 6 inches or 9 in height, with broadish grey leaves 
that twiddle and quirl and quirk themselves this way and that upon 
it, till the whole mass has the oddest crumpled effect ; at the top of 
this appear the loose spikes of brilliant carmine-crimson flowers. WM. 
jenestralis is perfectly hardy in warm well-drained places, but, from the 
look of it, no less than from the fact that it comes from Crete, admirers 
will be well advised to collect its seed after flowering, lest the 
parent vanish. 
Similar 8-inch wild Stocklings with flowers of rust-colour, lavender- 
grey, mauve and brown, often intensely fragrant, are MM. montana, 
odoratissima, oyensis, tristis, and thessala; it is quite probable that 
many of these names, however, and the geographical names more 
especially, are reducible to that most wide and variant species, 
M. varia (Cheiranthus varius), which already contains, as varieties 
confessed, two of the best plants of all, but is itself only found typically 
true in Spain and in Greece, the easterly and westerly extremities of 
its range. It is never a really common species, but occurs in stony 
sunny places, which it occupies with underground runners that throw 
up fresh tufts here and there, and will root from the smallest fragment 
in the garden. M. v. pedemontana is the first and the more precious 
of the named varieties. This forms a small neat tuffet of the customary 
_ leaves, long and narrow and softly hoary-grey ; and then in summer, 
and up all over the tuft, from July onwards, abundance of loose 6- or 
8-inch spires of blossoms which are as large as those of the type, but 
of a rich rosy-purple more brilliant, though no more attractive, than 
the wistfully appealing lavender and phillimot tones worn by the other 
smaller Matthiolas, as by so many other plants that do not love the 
garish day, but mean only to exhale their full sweetness into the quiet 
evening air, for the benefit of such fly-by-nights as share these views, 
and on whom, accordingly, bright colours would be love’s labour lost, 
seeing that all Matthiolas will share the common greyness of all cats 
by night. 
M. vallesiaca is a rarer and less attractive variety than the last, 
of M. varia. For the stems are fewer, more stiffly erect, and often as 
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