2o6 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part II. 



smooth, narrow, entire, and opposite ; the floral leaves or bracts 

 also entire. A pleasing border or rock perennial, flowering 

 rather late in the summer, and thriving best on slightly elevated 

 rockwork, for which it is also well fitted by its spreading, some- 

 what prostrate habit, forming tufts about a foot high. Increased 

 by division or seed. 



DRYAS OCTOPETALA. — Mountain Avens. 



Few have travelled in alpine or arctic regions without seeing 

 how abundantly the mountains are clothed with the creeping 

 stems and large creamy-white yellow-stamened flowers of this 

 plant. The leaves are shining above and white and downy 

 beneath, and the fruit has a feathery appendage above an inch 

 long. It is an evergreen, and, being neat in habit as well as 

 handsome in bloom, ought to be grown in every collection of 

 rock-plants. Widely distributed through the mountain region 

 of Europe, Asia, and North America, and very abundant in 

 Scotland. It is easy of culture in moist peat soil, in which it 

 grows so freely about Edinburgh that I have observed it form- 

 ing dressy edgings to beds in some of the nurseries there. Pro- 

 pagated from seed, or by cuttings and division where it grows 

 freely. 



Dryas Drummondi, a species very like the preceding, but 

 with yellow flowers, is also in cultivation, but far from common. 

 It would probably succeed under the conditions that suit the 

 other, but I have not seen it out of frames. 



ECHEVERIA SEOtTNDA.— i'z'/wr)/ E. 



A Mexican plant, with somewhat of the appearance of a large 

 European Houseleek, but forming more open rosettes, from three 

 to six inches in diameter, and of a very pleasing silvery glaucous 

 tone. The flowers are reddish, freely produced in long racemes 

 drooping at the top, making an attractive object in the green- 

 house. It is, however, chiefly grown for the effect of its rosettes 

 in the open garden, for which purpose it is kept over the winter 

 in frames or greenhouses, and put out in early summer ; but it 

 is hardy enough to survive the winter in some situations, and in 

 dry places on rockwork may be tried in the open air. It is almost 

 indispensable for association with dwarf succulents in geometrical 



