PRIMULA. 



dimensions it is hard to understand. For at their best they leave 

 P. CI . ping on the shelf, and P. Clusiana type comes near to 



being the grandest species in the grandest group we have. Yet, out 

 of minima and Clusiana a child has been born which has not combined 

 the two blossoms so much as added them together and produced 

 blossoms of almost unseemly enormousness and magnificence, glowing 

 pink with wide white eyes, as large as a five-shilling piece and larger, 

 ample in outline, firm in texture, and of such dominating beauty that 

 both its parents sit and sulk when it blossoms, and refuse to enter 

 into competition. For to its own natural merits P. x intermedia 

 adds that of being perhaps the freest and easiest of all the European 

 Primulas to grow, multiplying its crowns as quickly as a Primrose in 

 any rich loam or sterile moraine, with equal speed, but luxuriating 

 most fatly in the fattest soil, and rejoicing to be divided in late summer ; 

 while from every crown Spring never fails to call up a stem of those 

 superlatively splendid flowers in early April. The plant is sterile and 

 sets no seed, unlike the inferior reverse cross ; and in nature it is 

 interesting to note that both follow that curious law which seems to 

 indicate that hybrids are best bom on high and wind-swept ridges. 

 It is on such, and only there, that P. x Juribella will be seen, P. x 

 Faechinii, P. Dumoulinii, P. coronata, and the rest ; while on the 

 Schneeberg you will tramp miles of moorland made of nothing but 

 P. minima and P. Clusiana (intertwined with Dianthus alpinus, 

 Viola alpina, Campanula alpina) without ever seeing any hybrid 

 until you reach a certain high ridge, and there, and there alone, and 

 there only, within a range of a few hundred yards, will the inter- 

 mediates at last be found dotted about in all their wonder and 

 splendour. (They should be seen in flower before purchase.) 



P. intricate, Godr. and Gren., is nothing but a form of P. elatior 

 from the Southerly Alps. But nevertheless most valuable and charm- 

 ing, for it forms neat tufts in any good soil, and there flowers with an 

 unimaginable profusion of large creamy-lemon oxlips on scapes of 

 3 or 4 inches, without any intermission through the whole year, but 

 specially brilliant in spring and autumn. 



/'. idrusa (Rchb.) is merely a microform, but has the look of a 

 quite tiny P. farinosa, with enormous flowers and a large involvement 

 of bracts. 



P. invokwrata, Wall., 1828 (P. Munroi, Lindley, 1833), is a most 



lovely and easy-going bog-plant, so free and anxious to grow that our 



st of the group grow louder. It loves a wet clogging 



m rich soil, and there forms hearty spreading clumps of small dark 



oblong 1' alks, lush and glossy and smooth; high above 



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