This is a very distinct species growing runners which extend themselves by forming a new rosette after about 10cm of further growth. The longest runners on a first-year plant grown in partial shade now have five rosettes along the half metre of length, each new rosette flowering in its turn so that there are always flowers to be seen. This description, and indeed the palmate soft leaves suggest a woodland plant but the collection is reported to have been made among rocks and on rock ledges in rather dry situations. In cultivation any slight drying of the compost is rewarded by a rapid yellowing and thinning of the leaves which however quickly recover their soft green on watering.

The primary nodal rosettes generally form three leaves and five flowers which are pink in bud but open white., a characteristic noted in several of the new Chinese androsaces. After a time a weaker secondary runner grows from the original runner rosette. On this first plant these now extend to three nodes with smaller leaves and flowers but still at 10cm spacing from each other.

I leave it to the taxonomists to decide whether these growths are branches or stolons. Spontaneous root formation at the nodes can not be seen but Mike Smith quickly found that if they are pegged down into damp sand they root and form little plants that can be separated from the parent and grown on. It looks as though seeds might be forming too, in the first flowers from this spring.

From the experience of first season of pot cultivation I will try growing this species in a lightly shaded moist bed made up of grit and leafmould alongside A.rotundifolia, Nomocharis and similar plants needing constant but not high moisture and a reasonable amount of nourishment.