Authors: Phil.  

Botanical Description

Junellia uniflora). Hard mat forming shrublet l-6cm high overall and capable of spreading up to 50cm with infrequent and scarcely perceptible clusters of a very few, short woody spines. Leaves in dense, crowded rosettes, sessile, entire, linear-oblong, blunt, 5-8mm long, sparsely white-hispid and slightly revolute. Flowers solitary or in pairs, powerfully fragrant, sessile, 8-10 by 5-8mm, white ageing pink, or rose aging to pale crimson with violet-pink tubes, spring. Chile, the central cordilleras north to Coquimbo, in rock crannies and bare stony tracts such as stable scree and

ridge caps at 3200-4000m. The almost identical V. trifurcata probably has a similar ecology. Said to differ only in its fractionally longer, sessile leaves being trifid into linear lobes. It is restricted to the high Andes of Santiago. V. uniflora is frequently as free flowering in the wild as any dionysia or androsace, its surface solid with overlapping blossoms. In addition the perfume from a small colony can be almost overwhelming and clearly perceptible for considerable distances downwind.