Alpine Rock-Jasmine or Androsace alpina 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:...

, endemic to the Alps

Alps

The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

.

Distribution

In the wild, Androsace alpina grows on silicaceous substrates, particularly granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

, and is one of the few plants in the Alps to grow above 4000 metres, including near the summit of the Matterhorn

Matterhorn

The Matterhorn , Monte Cervino or Mont Cervin , is a mountain in the Pennine Alps on the border between Switzerland and Italy. Its summit is 4,478 metres high, making it one of the highest peaks in the Alps. The four steep faces, rising above the surrounding glaciers, face the four compass points...

 (only Ranunculus glacialis

Ranunculus glacialis

Ranunculus glacialis, the glacier crowfoot or glacier buttercup, is a plant of the family Ranunculaceae.-Distribution:Ranunculus glacialis is an arctic-alpine species, found in the high mountains of southern Europe as well as on the Scandinavian peninsula, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Jan Mayen,...

and perhaps Saxifraga biflora grow higher).

Description

The flowers of A. alpina are white or pink (often both on the same plant), and in the short flowering season can be so densely packed that they completely shade the foliage

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

. It is largely for this reason that A. alpina has become popular among horticulturists

Horticulture

Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...

.

Cultivation

Androsace alpina 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.