PRIMULA. 



beauty is more that of P. elliptica, however, with scapes of 2 or 3 

 inches, bearing many-flowered heads of big purple-rosy blossoms 

 hardly rising out of the leaves as they appear. It is a common beauty 

 high up in the Western Himalaya, having, like P. elliptica, the same 

 looks and ways as P. rosea, but with violet flowers. 



P.xHeerii is the natural hybrid between P. hirsuta and P. integri- 

 folia, which has had such a quantity of unnecessary synonyms, some 

 four of them contributed by one collector and three by another, 

 both of whom ought to have known better. It is a strikingly beautiful 

 little cross, always to be looked for (but very seldom found) where the 

 two parents are growing together (as, for instance, throughout the 

 high moors of the Engadine). It forms ramifying masses, and has 

 flowers of far greater size and brilliancy than either of its parents — 

 though it is variable, and should be bought and collected only in its 

 best forms, where the blossoms, on stems of 2 inches or less, are of an 

 amplitude and splendour altogether exceptional : brilliant pink with 

 cloven lobes and waved loose wide outlines, and a white fuzz of glands 

 in the blurred white throat. It may, apart from its own personality, be 

 always known from P. integrifolia by its broader, softer, bright -green 

 leaves, never entire, but always more or less toothed ; and from P. 

 hirsuta by its much scantier down, much larger fewer flowers on longer 

 foot-stalks, and the head swathed in longer, broader, baggier bracts. 

 It seems, in the garden, to retain its native prejudice against lime, 

 which comes to it strongly through both its parents, and may therefore 

 be an inexpugnable heritage. 



P. helodoxa is a superb acquisition in the Japonica-group, of the 

 same hardiness and stature and use and beauty — a stately splendour 

 with tall stems and whorls of large flowers of soft rich yellow, well 

 indeed to be called the Glory of the Bog. (China.) 



P. x helvetica (Don.)=P. x pubescens, Jacq. 



P. helvetica (Ktze.) = Androsace helvetica. 



P. Hemsleyi is a Chinese species allied to P. cuneifolia, from 

 the bogs of Tatsienlu. It has a neat charm, forming a basal rosette 

 of stalked toothed leaves elliptic in outline, and sending up a 

 Farinosa-stem, with a similar head of mauve flowers with a deep- 

 cut bell-shaped calyx, and an oval seed-head afterwards sticking 

 far out. 



P. Henrici lives in the rocks between Lhasa and Batang. It is a 

 cushion-forming plant, possibly of the Suffruticose section, making 

 long trunks in the way of P. Allionii, thickly clad in long narrow wavy- 

 edged leaves (and their dead further down), glandular-downy above, 

 and white-powdered beneath, blushing to a dark bronzy noto as they 



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