PRIMULA. 



and almost shining, until one might mistake it for an Arthritic 

 Primula. But the leaves are softer and more strap-shaped, they 

 have no edge of membrane, and they are always set all over with 

 fine glandular hairiness, besides being smaller and forming looser, 

 not dense-clumped cushions. The stems, too, are glandular, about 

 an inch or two in height, with large reddish bracts and a reddish tinge 

 to the baggy calyx too. The flowers are borne in heads of two or 

 three ; they are very large and densely glandular-furry in the blurred 

 white throat, but of a washy magenta-lilac that makes P. integrifolia 

 the least pleasing of our European alpine species, though quite ready of 

 culture in full sun in open porous peat. Its most beautiful aspect is 

 offered, I believe, on the Joch Pass in the Oberland above Engelberg, 

 where it colours the alps with its millions of lilac-purple blossoms, 

 relieved by millions of Ranunculus alpester standing up in snowy 

 moons among the magenta-red masses of the Primula. (There is 

 also a sub-species or form of P. farinosa that bears the same name, to 

 say nothing of the fact that it has been used by many other authors 

 to cover^many other pretenders.) 



P. X intermedia, Port., if it likes, can be by far the grandest of all 

 our mountain Primulas, species or hybrids. It is the cross of P. 

 Clusiana and P. minima, occurring, very rarely indeed, in wide colonies 

 among its parents, on the high limestones of Styria, threading the 

 open fine turf with laxly-carpeting rosettes, distinct at once in size 

 and habit from either parent, running more freely and widely than 

 P. minima, and larger in the tuft of shining, oval-pointed leaves ; 

 and less stay-at-home in a clump than P. Clusiana, with leaves, indeed 

 of the same shape and glittering scheme, but half the size, and always 

 cut at the edge into a varying number of quite spiny-looking fine teeth. 

 There are several leaf- and flower-forms : one, the smaller, is clearly 

 nearer to P. minima, and is probably the reverse cross, having little 

 scapes of an inch or so, carrying two Minima -flowers of richer colour- 

 ing, which are followed by fertile capsules of seed, while the plant itself 

 has the carpet-habit of P. minima, expanded into great laxity, but 

 still recognisable, though the rosetted leaves are pointed and up- 

 standing in small glossy clusters. The other cross clearly has P. 

 Clusiana for its mother, and is the noblest of its kind I know. Here 

 the rosettes are larger, the toothing of the foliage more evident even 

 to the casual eye, the colour of more glaucous pale-green, and the 

 habit a series of small clumps of two or three crowns together, scattered 

 here and there over perhaps half a dozen square yards of moor, and 

 then nowhere again to be beheld. The flower-stems, too, are taller, 

 some 3 or 4 inches high, and furnished more fully with flowers whose 



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