Androsace villosa is an alpine plant

Alpine plant

Alpine plants are plants that grow in the alpine climate, which occurs at high elevation and above the tree line. Alpine plants grow together as a plant community in alpine tundra.-Alpine plant diversity:...

, widespread in the mountains of Europe and Asia. It is frequently grown by alpine gardeners.

Distribution

In the wild, A. villosa grows on limestone mountains in Europe and Asia, usually on rocky slopes above 1500 m.

Description

A. villosa is very variable. The typical form grown in gardens is a small tufted or mat-forming perennial, with rosettes of linear to elliptical leaves, up to 1.5 cm across. The leaves have fine hairs underneath, particularly towards the tips. The flowers, which are 6–10 mm in diameter, are in umbels on stems up to 3 cm tall. They vary in colour from white to red-purple, with a pink or yellow eye. The white forms may age to pink.

Cultivation

Androsace villosa is widely grown in rock garden

Rock Garden

The Rock Garden or Rock Garden of Chandigarh is a Sculpture garden in Chandigarh, India, also known as Nek Chand's Rock Garden after its founder Nek Chand, a government official who started the garden secretly in his spare time in 1957. Today it is spread over an area of forty-acres , it is...

s. A number of forms are in cultivation:

• A. villosa var. arachnoidea has a compact habit and more woolly rosettes.
• A. villosa var. taurica (syn. A. taurica) has pink flowers with a red eye.
• A. villosa var. jacquemontii, from the Himalaya above 3500 m, is stoloniferous, spreading to form large mats. The leaves are more densely hairy; the flowers are red-purple with a greenish-yellow eye. It is sensitive to winter wet.