96 THE CROSS-BEARERS 



are others of the clan less familiar except to those 

 who make hardy plants their hobby. Earliest of all, 

 for it flowers right through mild winters, is the tiny 

 Portuguese and North-African annual, lonopsidium 

 acaule, known in English gardens as the violet cress, 

 and in American as the diamond flower. Why 

 ' diamond ' it would be hard to say ; nor is the title 

 ' violet ' much more nearly descriptive, for the flowers 

 are but tinged with pale lilac. It might be deemed 

 insignificant from its diminutive stature, which attains 

 at most to a couple of inches ; but once get this little 

 chap established by dropping seed into the chinks of a 

 mossy wall, and you will be loth to lose it. Nor are 

 you likely to do so, for this native of sunny Mediter- 

 ranean shores sows itself as pertinaciously under our 

 cloudy skies as its less desirable relative, the charlock 

 or wild mustard. 



Fitting companion to the violet cress, but a true 

 perennial, is the Sardinian Morisia hypogcea. One 

 would scarcely recognise this pigmy as a Cross- bearer 

 at first sight ; but closer inspection reveals the nature 

 of a multitude of clear golden crosses, large in pro- 

 portion to the plant, clustered about the centre of a 

 rosette of narrow deeply-toothed leaves of rich ivy- 

 green, spread flat upon the ground. If the weather is 

 mild, it begins to flower in January, continuing all 

 through spring, and is seldom without blossoms before 

 midsummer. The Pyrenean whitlow-grass {Draba 

 pyrenaica) is another mountain herb that closely hugs 

 the ground. It used to be dignified as constituting 

 a separate genus under the name of Petrocallis, whereof 



