CCXII.— THRIFT. 
Statice Armeria Linne. 
HE Family Plumbaginacea is a small group of ten or a dozen genera and 
less than three hundred species of perennial herbaceous or shrubby plants, 
cosmopolitan in distribution, but more especially characteristic of the sea-coast and 
saline steppes. Most of them have narrow, undivided, and often somewhat fleshy 
leaves ; a bracteolate inflorescence of polysymmetric, perfect, pentamerous flowers ; 
a persistent inferior calyx ; a deeply-divided, convolute corolla ; five epipetalous 
stamens opposite to the petals ; and a one-chambered ovary, with five styles and a 
single, basal, anatropous ovule, forming a dry indehiscent nut. The five styles and 
the single ovule are, it will be noticed, the main distinctions separating the Family 
from the Primulacea. 
The Family takes its name from the genus Plumbago , which has been named 
Leadwort from the peculiar cool grey lead-blue of the flowers of several of its species, 
such as P. capensis Thunberg, a South African hedgerow climber which is a favourite 
in our greenhouses, and P. LarpenU Lindley, a hardier Chinese form. There has been 
considerable doubt of late years as to the proper names of our two much differing 
British genera, the Thrifts and the Sea Lavenders, the name Statice having been 
applied to both of them, and the latter having bten known under Philip Miller’s 
name Limonium which, in fact, dates back to Matthiolus. Linne certainly took the 
Thrift as the type cf his genus Statice ; and, therefore, we must employ Miller’s 
Limonium for the Sea Lavenders. 
The narrow rigid leaves and pink pentamerous flowers long associated the 
Thrifts with the Pinks, especially such species of Dianthus and Silcne as have their 
flowers closely crowded together, under the name Armeria. A species in each of 
those genera still, in fact, retains Armeria as a specific name, whilst the Thrift is 
sometimes known as the Sea Pink , the Cushion Pink , or Scawfell Pink. Gerard says : 
“The Sweet John, and also the Sweet William, are both comprehended under one title, that is to say Armeria, in French 
armotres ,• hereupon Ruellius nameth it Armerii fiores.” 
It is difficult, however, to trace any intelligible connection between these plants 
and armoires, i.e. wardrobes ; but a very plausible etymology is the Breton ar mor, 
the sea-shore. 
The genus comprises some fifty species, mostly belonging to the North Temperate 
Zone, but some of them, including our own species, occurring in the Andes as far 
south as Chile. It is an interesting fact that closely-allied or identical forms 
occur in the unfavourable surroundings alike of the sea-shore and of bare mountain 
tops, though this diversity of habitat is accompanied by some differences in their 
chemical composition. Thrift as a maritime plant contains both iodine and soda ; 
but on mountains, as in our gardens, both these substances are replaced by potash. 
