THE MEADOW SAXIFRAGE— continued. 
Chrysosplenium, and Parnassia are placed in this Tribe. By far the most extensive 
genus in the Family is that from which it takes its name, comprising as it does 
some two hundred species, mostly northern Arctic, alpine, or Temperate forms. 
Most of them are xerophytic and many grow on bare rock surfaces, inserting tufts 
of short, slender rootlets into the crevices of the stone, and thus, perhaps, to some 
slight extent aiding the penetration of rain, melted snow, and the action of frost, and 
justifying their names of Stone-break and Saxifrage^ the latter being derived from the 
Latin saxwn, stone, and frango, I break. The quaint mediaeval theory of signatures 
seized upon this habit as an indication that these plants would be efficacious in cases 
of calculus. 
Even among our few British species, variously estimated at from twelve to 
twenty in number, there are various adaptations to dry conditions. Thus the 
purple-flowered Saxifraga oppositifolia Linne, which is found from Snowdon, 
Ingleborough, and Ben Lomond to Franz Josef Land and Tibet, has water-glands 
at the tips of its leaves which form an incrustation of chalk ; and London Pride 
(5. umbrosa Linne), common in our gardens but wild in the west of Ireland, has 
thick leathery leaves ; while the Meadow Saxifrage (5. granulata Linne), though it 
may be found in moist meadows, is more at home on gravelly banks, and stores up 
nutriment in the little brown, downy, pea-like bulbils from which it takes its specific 
name. One of the effects of drought upon it is, perhaps, the rich tinting of its 
palmately-lobed kidney-shaped leaves with red and brown. 
Its stem is viscid with scattered glandular hairs, probably, as in London Pride, 
a protection for the honey-store of the blossoms from the depredations of small 
crawling insects, those “ unbidden guests,” as Kerner calls them, which would be 
unlikely to effect cross-pollination. As such glands can, however, absorb liquid 
nitrogenous matter, it is possible that this species, and, still more, the little Saxifraga 
tridactylites Linne of our dry upland fields, may derive some nourishment from the 
captured insects. 
The beautiful chalice-like flowers expand to an inch in diameter, their obovate 
petals, dead-white above, becoming greenish-yellow below as guides to the honey 
secreted by the base of the ovary ; and as they are protandrous they are probably 
generally cross-pollinated by insect-visitors. 
A double-flowered garden variety has received a number of pretty popular 
names, such as First of May and Fair Maid of France. It was also, perhaps, the 
Pretty Maids that grew “ all in a row ” in the garden of “ Mary, quite contrary.” 
