PRIMULA. 



nised as such, but seeming, in the typical instance of P. purpurea, 

 from the alpine woods, as if an oat had gone mad and swung out in 

 purple ears. This is the style of the family, which is not showy, but 

 easily to be cultivated in any worthless out-of-the-way place on the 

 cool side of the rock-garden, or under its worst bushes ; where all 

 will look delicate and quaint, when their tall stems of a yard or so 

 have pierced th< in July and August, and above the leaves 



float out their loose sprays of fine purple ears. There are many other 

 ■ . especially from the Indian Alps ; as, for instance, P. lchasi- 

 ana, P. Brunoniana. P. violaefolia (small and neat and slender), P. 

 Hookeri, P. Hkkimensis, and P. scandem — all worth a trial if they 

 could be g not grievously to b- missed if they can . 



Primula.* — A cold awe sweeps across the gardener as he comes 

 at last into the shadow of this grim and glorious name, which, there is 

 no question, strikes terror no less than rapture into the mind of the 

 bold' is royal race has acquired a bad reputation in the gar- 



den, not on its own demerits but on the obstinate misconception of 

 gardeners, which no preachments or experience of advisers seem to 

 prevail against. For the most alpine plants of this family are usually 

 treated by cultivators, with careful worship, to the selectest, dampest, 

 shadiest , and dankest deprc ssions of the rock-work, in the clogged humid 

 soil that it is considered they particularly affect. With the result 

 that, though they do not die indeed (for i r takes more than hard words 

 to kill an Arthritic or an Erythrodose Primula), they linger sadly and 

 miserably, because they do hate it all so, and would be so glad to die 

 and go hence if only they could. But no, there from season to season 

 they sit leaden in flowerless gloom, and their leathern dark leaves cry 

 out incessantly for the sun, and the springy well -drained turf of the 

 Cima Tombea or the Frate di Breguzzo ; and if only the cultivator 

 who has never seen them growing, but has merely taken his cultural 

 notions from the timid books of thirty years ago (in the old 

 drainless condition of the garden, all alpines of any preciousness were 

 regarded with the awe of Verlot's time, when the only two that were 

 sadei y, as even possibly hardy were Arabis albida and 



ma Gentianella), if only the cultivator, I say. would shake off 

 these foolish chilly nightmares, and emerge with his Piimulas into the 

 bold and blessed day, he would have them flowering round his feet in 



this attempt at a compendium was compiled in 1913, and revised at Lanchow 

 in the ity of new species and fresh information has been 



acqu;r porate it in the text. Accordingly a 



irfll be found at the end of the book (exclusive of my own field-notes 

 on Chinese species), in which all unknown name9 may be looked up, with a hope of there 

 findir . y arc valid. 



104 



