OllPIXE. 59 



transplanted to the cottage garden. Our illustration is 

 taken from a field specimen, which we gathered off a 

 hedge-bank. In its wild state the plant is from one to 

 two feet high, but in the garden we have seen it a yard 

 high. The stalks thrown up are numerous, upright, 

 unbranched, round, and solid-looking, and generally a rich 

 red in colour, their upper portion especially being often 

 in addition a good deal spotted and streaked with a deeper 

 red. The leaves are numerous and coarsely toothed. In 

 some plants the upper leaves are rounded at their bases, 

 and are without stems, while in others we find them at- 

 tenuated and tapering at their bases, and borne on a short 

 stem. In colour they are a bluish green, giving the whole 

 plant when seen as a mass in the hedgerow a somewhat 

 cold greyish appearance. The flowers are carried in com- 

 pact heads at the tops of the stems, and form a brilliant 

 mass of crimson colour. The spreading and acutely -pointed 

 petals ranging boldly out from the centre, and the ten 

 conspicuous stamens, are very noticeable. 



The generic name is derived from the Latin verb sedo, 

 to sit, in allusion to the way that many of the plants 

 of the genus appear to drop themselves on rock or brick- 

 work or thatch, with little or no earth in support. The 

 present species, the orpine, has a wide distribution, and in 

 sunnier climes than ours it is a plant of the mountains. 

 Liudley, we see, gives its true habitat as mountainous woods, 

 and Casalpinus, an early herbalist, calls it the Crassala 

 Montana, but it grows freely with us in lowlier situations. 

 It may possibly have been an introduced plant originally, 

 but it is so tenacious of life that it has become thoroughly 

 at home with us. This tenacity of life has gained for it 

 the name of live-long. We have heard of its being used in 



