PART II.] 



ALPINE FLOWERS FOR GARDENS 



315 



SELAGINELLA A few graceful 

 mossy kinds of this large family of 

 trailing plants are valuable for cloth- 

 ing shady spots in the rock-garden. 

 These kinds are S. denticulate/,, S. 

 helvetica, and S. rupestris, plants of 

 a delicate green, mossy growth. S. 

 Kraussiana, generally known in plant- 

 houses as S. denticulata, is also hardy 

 in many places, and in Ireland grows 

 and thrives better than any of the 

 kinds mentioned. All these plants 

 require a well-drained peaty soil and 

 shaded and sheltered place. 



SEMPERVIVUM (Houseleek). 

 Dwarf perennial succulent plants of 

 striking form and variety, inhabiting, 

 like the Stonecrops, hot sandy and 

 rocky places. They are very useful 

 for the rock-garden, and of the easiest 

 culture and increase. Some are 

 beautiful in flower, but perhaps their 

 best quality for the rock-garden is to 

 give us dwarf relief in pretty greens 

 and greys at all times. The late Mi- 

 Jordan in his very interesting garden 

 at Lyons accumulated an immense 

 number of forms of the various species 

 from many localities, but from the 

 point of view of the rock-garden a 

 few types of this family will give us 

 all the effect we can desire. Much 



the best way, however, is to increase 

 the kinds that strike us as most pleas- 

 ing in colour for our purpose. Of all 

 plants they are perhaps the most easy 

 to cultivate and increase, growing in 

 any soil, the poorer the better perhaps 

 and bearing division at any time. 

 The little offsets will grow freely. 

 Apart from all cultivation and increase, 

 however, we should consider in this, 

 as in so many other cases, the stature 

 of the plants, and only associate them 

 with dwarf plants, and give them full 

 exposure in open sunny places. These 

 are among the plants which grow on 

 the surface of the stone itself, as we 

 see the common kind grow on the 

 roofs of sheds and houses. The others 

 may also be established by putting a 

 piece of stiff clay moistened and 

 dabbed in the face of the stone 

 pressing in the little offshoots of the 

 Stonecrop, which will soon take hold 

 and find their own living on the faces 

 of stones. 



Sempervivrun arachnoideum (Cobweb 

 Houseleek). One of the most singular of 

 alpine plants, its tiny rosettes of fleshy 

 leaves being covered at the top with a 

 thick white down. Widely distributed 

 over the Alps and Pyrenees, this plant is 

 quite hardy in our gardens; thriving in 

 sunny arid spots, forming sheets of 

 whitish rosettes, which look as if fine- 

 spinning spiders had been at work upon 

 them, and sending up rose-coloured flowers 

 in summer. About London it sometimes 

 suffers from the sparrows plundering 

 the "down." It is easily increased by 

 division, and thrives in sandy loam. 



S. ciliatum (Fringed Houseleek). The 

 margins of the leaves of this species are 

 edged with transparent hair-like bodies, 

 the leaves are barred lengthways with 

 brown and deep-green stripes, flowers 

 freely in summer, in close corymbs of 

 many fine yellow flowers, each scarcely 

 J inch across. It ought to be placed in 

 some dry spot under a ledge of rock, and 

 might be tried with advantage on the 



