PRIMULA. 



wild damp woods. It flowers before the huge primrose -like leaves, 

 in earliest spring, with huge tight round heads of lilac-purple on 

 stout scapes. The plant enjoys any cool rich soil, and is indispensable 

 for spring effects, though too coarse and massive to be accused of 

 charm. It varies copiously from seed, has blossoms in differing 

 degrees of purple, lilac or mauve, and leaves more or less endowed with 

 powder. One form, rather neater in habit and choicer in colour, 

 with dense golden meal on the reverse of the leaves, is distinguished 

 in catalogues as P. cas/nniriana. P. denticulate, colours the hillsides 

 of the North-Westcrn Himalayas in spring, and its young leaves are 

 recommended for salads, while its roots, when powdered, are said to 

 be destructive of leeches. Sometimes in our gardens, the huger, 

 older masses may moulder off in a wet winter, but seed is always 

 abundant, and prompt to genninate, nor need P. denticulate be looked 

 on as anything but a sound perennial. Its colour-forms are often 

 named, and are too rarely an improvement on the better blues of 

 the type. P. d. cashmiriana Ruly, for example, is an instance of 

 misplaced zeal in nomenclature, having far more resemblance to a 

 dingy amethyst of poor and dirty water. The white form, on the 

 contrary, is beautiful indeed, with rather larger flowers than the type, 

 not quite so densely huddled in a head. 



P. deorum has in its time aroused much excitement and subsequent 

 heartburnings. It is a stout species, alone in a group with exquisite 

 P. glutinosa. and comes from high meadows and rill-sides near the 

 melting snows in the mountains of Thrace and Bulgaria. It forms a 

 tuft of uprising, narrow entire leaves, leathery and glandular. Well 

 above these stand stout scapes bearing one-sided generousty-furnished 

 umbels of nodding flowers, large and round, of a deep magenta-purple. 

 In cultivation it has proved hard to grow, hard to keep, and hard to 

 flower. Nor, when the rare flowers have appeared, have their colour 

 and size been of a nature to rouse enthusiasm. Clearly P. deorum 

 requires the same abundant running water throughout the summer 

 that is demanded by P. glutinosa ; but, despite its pretentious name, 

 it is not really so well worth the trouble as that most delicious of 

 plants and most exacting of jewels. 



P.xDeschnannii is the natural hybrid between P. minima xP. 

 Wnlfeniana. It is intermediate, being variable, taller than P. minima, 

 and with small leaves, dentate after the habit of P. minima. This 

 has also been divided into two extreme types ; the one nearer 

 P. minima, with no scape at all, and the other with a short scape, larger 

 size ; and fewer teeth to the tip of the leaves, thus showing closer 

 approach to P. Wnlfeniana. This last is listed sometimes as P. 



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