PRIMULA. 



P. farinosa, and its many varieties have even been published as 

 varieties of P. farinosa. The species is of extended range, stretching 

 from Siberia down through the Caucasus to Armenia and Turkestan, 

 a lover, like its cousin, of mountain meadows and marshy places. 

 In the course of its travels it develops many forms, of which P. a. 

 sibirica, armena, and Brotheri may be remarked. 



P. AUionii is the jewel of jewels among our European saxatile 

 species. It is a most rare treasure, existing only in some dozen 

 stations or more, within a radius of as many miles or less, on the low, 

 hot limestones of the Maritime Alps from Mentone to San Dalmazzo 

 de Tenda. Here it inhabits small shallow grottoes, or outlines the 

 minute crevices of the hard rock wiih its irresistible little tight 

 cushions of ovate leaves, grey-green with the sticky exudation of its 

 glands. Upon these cushions appear for months together, on scapes 

 so short as to be imperceptible, glorious great rose-pale flowers, in 

 number from one to six on each rosette. In the shady caves, where 

 neither sun nor rain can ever penetrate, P. AUionii forms enormous 

 cushions a yard and more across, the leaves never dropping, but drying 

 into withered tags along the perpetually elongating trunks, that push 

 out at the end the rosette of the current year, while further down their 

 length still linger the capsules of summers long bygone and forgotten. 

 In such situations the growth is more luxuriant, and the masses larger ; 

 but on the open rock, exposed to some hours of the grilling sunshine 

 of Provence, the serried tight tufts of the Primula are no less thriving 

 and prosperous, though far harder to acquire than in the grottoes, 

 where each trunk plucked from some pendent hassock that may have 

 watched Napoleon pass, will come away with promising white points 

 of new rootage at the base. This precious Primula has an un- 

 deservedly bad reputation for difficulty in cultivation. In reality 

 it gives no trouble, when once its first necessity of perfect drainage 

 has been granted. I find the plant of perfectly easy culture on 

 the Cliff at Ingleborough, whether in sheltered hollows or on the 

 face of rock, exposed to the merciless winds and rains of my 

 climate. At the same time, excessive moisture is the one trial that 

 all specimens dread, and I have known good tufts decay away within 

 a day or two, if afflicted with a too unbearable series of downpours, 

 ce secure from such should then be chosen for P. AUionii. which 

 objects neither to sun nor to shade, prefers hard limestone rock to 

 in. and must, indeed, always be treated as a essentially 



ile in its r< quirements. As a iule, even if a suitable chink, firm, 

 minute, and immovable, be secured, the difficulty of introducing into 

 it the foot -long white fibres of an established clump will be found 



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