Help with alpine ID?

We had a couple of badly-faded tags on some alpines last year (or at least the tags were faded by the time we had the troughs ready for planting, anyway), so I'm not sure what this plant is. It was planted up last summer, and is now about 2.5" across. The texture is firm and spiky (though not really sharp). Comparing to a Silene acaulis planted at the same time, the silene seems softer in texture, and flatter in form. When I don't recognize an alpine (and there would be a vast number of those!), I jokingly assume it's a draba, LOL!
Anyway, can anyone send me in the right direction on this little guy?

(BTW, this is in our "chocolate brownie" trough, so named from the excess of brown coloring, and from the fact that it crumbles with light finger pressure! It was a recipe from the internet that DH tried (against his better judgement, it should be noted)... but, anyway, some caution with hypertufa recipes is warranted... Needless to say, he went back to his own recipe after that one, LOL! It would probably not survive a move, and I'll be transplanting the plants into another trough soon.)

I'm no expert and it's pretty hard to tell without flowers, but the leaves do resemble my Douglasia (laevigata) .... they don't form a tight bun like that though.

Espertise even more lacking here, and what can I say . . . . .looks like a draba to me.

(Really, I just want to say hi to Rann, and say that a friend of mine just came back from a trip to Sweden, and took a 3 day side trip to Iceland. He couldn't get over the beauty! This from a man not even interested in plants, ecosystems and general landscapes. He was so taken that the only other thing he mentioned was how expensive things were. "People were eating a lot of hot dogs and ice cream." he said. LOL)

Hi Leftwood :-) Yes I'm not surprised he thought things were expensive! They really are. The hot dogs are about the cheapest meal you can get - but they are very good - I personally think they're the best hot dogs around ;-) lol

Thank you for the Douglasia suggestion... and for the draba suggestion. (Ha! I knew it was a draba - they're all drabas, LOL!) I'm eagerly awaiting a book order from NARGS, which should provide some more comparisons of members of these genera for ID'ing this (...and my various other mystery alpines).

This message was edited Aug 24, 2007 1:08 AM

You're both wrong! :) It's a Saxifraga...probably S. sancta 'Macedonica'. Just returned to the rock garden forum....this summer has been so hectic I didn't have a chance to check this forum more regularly.

Ah ha - that seems to be it! Thank you very much!

Hi Todd - glad you figured it out :-) I was pretty sure you'd know it ;-) lol