MELITTIS MELISSOPHYLLUM. 
indulges in both sexes on the same tuft, with the usual result that 
here again the females have the advantage in mere size and show. 
And finally comes the Queen of the family :— 
M. Elizabethae—Deéad long since is the Archduke Rainer of 
Austria, and long since dead the Archduchess Elizabeth his wife ; 
yet most worthily do they both live on, the one in pink and the other 
in blue, by means of the two most permanent and illustrious in- 
habitants of his province of Venetia. High upon the limestone cliffs 
lives Campanula Raineri, and high upon other limestone cliffs Melan- 
dryum Elizabethae, a jewel to be long sought afar, and sometimes 
seen nestling upon the cooler side of limestone ranges in among the 
stones and moss of the track-side amid little Tofieldias and Ranunculus 
bilobus, or sometimes seeding down into the shingles of the becks, 
and there occurring in a profusion unknown above, where its tufts of 
narrow glossy foliage sit here and there among the stones and scantier 
grasses, but need a practised eye to spy them out—here a one and 
there a one, but never a mass or colony. Not difficult, though, is it 
to tell them in late July, when forth from under each rosette stray the 
stems of downy claret-coloured velvet, wandering along the ground 
for a few inches and then rising up like the neck of a serpent, to unfold 
one or two of those enormous ragged flowers of flaming magenta-rose 
that look like some monstrous Godetia gone lost among the alpine 
herbage. But in the river beds are its roots best studied, for it makes 
fat and solid yellow rat-tails of a yard or so; and, since it will readily 
root again in sand from almost the smallest fragment, it is more pro- 
fitable to study and collect the thing at its best, than to quarry it 
from amid the limestone cliffs above, prising away the slabs in vain, 
and tearing wide the fissures, without ever seeming to near the end 
of the Mclandryum’s root. In cultivation this beautiful rare treasure, 
so much more tropical in the look than alpine, is of the easiest culture, in 
moraine, or in light rich soil, cool, full of stones and as deep as possible. 
It must never be forgotten that the plant is not a peat-lover, nor an 
inhabitant of hot shales, as has been in old days declared, but on the 
contrary a most local species of the Lombard limestones, where it 
always prefers the less sun-flogged aspects of the mountain. Get it, 
however, established in the garden, and it will give no trouble, but 
continue forming yearly, for some half a dozen seasons, more and 
more of its wide shining Dianthoid tufts of emerald-green ; and, in the 
meantime, if the gardener be provident, he will yearly save his seed and 
keep a stock in progress. 
M. Zawadskyi is the correct name of Silene Zawadskyt (q.v.). 
Melittis Melissophyllum, the Balm, is a really and rarely 
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