CCXIII.— THE DWARF SEA LAVENDER. 
Limonium humile Miller. 
T HE Sea Lavenders often grow side by side with the Thrift. Sharing the same 
unfavourable conditions so far as water-supply is concerned, though apparently 
rejoicing in the uninterrupted sunshine on the flat, wide-stretching salt-marshes, they 
exhibit similar xerophytic adaptations. Their leaves are often somewhat fleshy and 
glaucous, and their flowers share with the Bog Asphodel, with Rushes, and with 
a particular section of South African Composite the persistent membranous but 
often brightly-coloured perianth to which we give the name “ everlasting.” In the 
structure of the flower there is but little difference between the two groups, save 
that the styles in the Sea Lavenders are glabrous, whilst those of Thrift are hairy ; 
but the whole appearance of the two groups is so different that it may well cause 
surprise to learn that Linnaeus classed them together in the one genus Statice. The 
explanation, however, is that the striking difference between the two groups is the 
character of the inflorescence, whilst it was a cardinal principle with the great Swedish 
botanist and his more precise followers that generic characters were to be based 
exclusively on the flower, neither habit, vegetative characters, nor even the branching 
of the inflorescence being considered. The gradual adoption of a Natural System of 
classification, however, modified the views of botanists, not only as to classes, but 
also as to genera and species ; and the earliest change made was the separation of 
the Thrifts under the name Armeria. As, however, the Thrift had been taken by 
Linn6 as the type of his genus Statice , we are bound, as we have seen, to retain 
Statice as the name for Thrift and take the next earliest generic name for the Sea 
Lavenders, which is Limonium. Aei/MovLov, Leimonion , meaning “ belonging to 
moist meadows,” is used by Dioscorides ; but Philip Miller, in the eighth edition 
of his “Gardener’s Dictionary,” published in 1768, is the first post-Linnaean writer 
to employ it, and he there uses Limonium humile as a name for the subject of our 
Plate. This plant was described as Statice bahusiensis by Fries in 1839, and was, 
not quite accurately, identified by Babington in 1843 as the species described as 
S. rariflora by Drejer in 1838 ; and it, therefore, appears under one or other of 
these names in many of our Floras. 
Limonium comprises some 1 30 species, distributed over most parts of the world 
and occurring on saline steppes as well as on salt-marshes, but especially abundant in 
western Asia. They are perennial herbaceous plants, with all their leaves radical, and 
with their flowers grouped in a mixed inflorescence which is technically known as a 
compound raceme of drepania. Its primary and secondary branches succeed one 
another acropetally, but the ultimate pedicels or flower-bearing twigs form unilateral 
cymes. These are of a different type from those in the crowded heads of the 
Thrift, each successive branch being on the same side of the first flowering axis and 
in one plane with it. This is termed a drepanium , the “ sichel ” of German botanists, 
