EASILY GROWN ROCK PLANTS 7 
quite small one as A. procurrens, with prostrate stems 
and small white flowers. A. albida has a rather effective 
variegated-leaved variety, which makes a showy patch 
of colour if kept in good form by frequent pruning, or by 
placing stones over any lengthening naked stems to 
encourage rooting, so that the plant makes a dense 
spreading mass. Another variegated arabis is a form 
of bellidifolia, so named because its foliage is somewhat 
like a daisy. A. carduchorum has yellow flowers, but so 
far as garden effect is concerned, it is inferior to Alyssum 
saxatile, or its double form. 
ARENARIA.—Here we have the sweetest little carpeting 
plants, that cover earth and stones alike with a close 
velvety mantle of slender hugging stems thickly clothed 
with minute foliage, and thickly strewn, for a good part 
of late spring and summer, with tiniest white flowers 
that glisten like fairies’ teardrops. A. balearica, the 
species to which this description best applies, should never 
be absent from a collection of alpines, if ’tis to serve no 
other purpose than to form a carpet for the spring snow- 
flake, Leucojum vernum, the Dodecatheons, Sisyrinchiums, 
or a colony of hardy Orchids. All these, and many more 
plants of slender but erect growth, show themselves to 
infinitely better advantage over the living carpet of A. 
balearica than when the bare earth is seen between them. 
A clump of snowdrops or of the miniature daffodils will 
be preserved from mud splashes, and the lovely autumn 
Colchicums and autumn Crocuses will show their full 
glory when allowed to break through the lace-like growth 
of this ideal foil to their white or coloured flowers. 
