Crevice Plants and Moisture 107 



Plants of moist alpine pastures and of the snow-lin?, 

 they are often drenched with the melting snow in sum- 

 mer and for a long spell in winter dry, snug, and warm. 

 They prefer a mixture of loam, leaf mould, and sand in 

 equal degree. Wet in summer and dry in winter are 

 the best conditions for them. In addition, breaking 

 them up freely in early spring (April) and replanting 

 firmly materially assists the development of flowering 

 crowns. The smaller-growing sorts, S. pusilla and 

 S. minima, are subjects ripe for the Moraine. 



Elsewhere, crevice-planting for Kabschia Saxifrages 

 and cushion-like Androsace has been referred to, 

 though it must not be overlooked that applied moisture 

 in summer-time is very essential to the welfare of 

 plants so circumstanced. Success or failure, indeed, 

 might hinge not a little on the preparation of fissur^ 

 or cj-evice : their loose or firm soil contents particu- 

 larly. The artificially constructed fissure is a different 

 thing, presumably, to that formed in Nature, full, it 

 may be, with the choicest fragments of disentegrated 

 rock and debris, the accumulations of the centuries, 

 which have played so large a part in consolidating 

 them. Hence firmness of soil contents in the artifi- 

 cially arranged fissure is essential, while a too rapid 

 percolation of moisture may be prevented by a lining 

 of clay placed low down. Otherwise there may be the 

 danger of applied water carrying the finer particles of 

 soil away, leaving the root fibres all but inert in a 

 vacuum. 



Cobweb Houseleeks (Sempervivum arachnoideum) 

 are, when well placed, of the highest ornament in the 

 rock garden, and of the simplest possible cultivation. 

 Amid the crevices of grey, vertically disposed rock, or 

 colonised in the hottest and sunniest positions where 

 watering is difficult, no plants are better suited, and, 

 when established, no feature in rock-gardening is of 

 greater interest. The drier and sunnier the place, the 

 more pronounced their characteristic beauty. How 

 they wed themselves to the rock in their true home. 



