PRIMULA. 



which in May shoot brave 6-inch stems, unfolding a head of very large 

 flowers, very round and opulent in outline, very deliciously sweet- 

 scented, and of a white so profound and cold that it sometimes chills 

 off into an icy blue. P. involucrata needs no other prescription than 

 wetness and richness, seeds freely, can be divided at any time (but 

 best in late summer), and often sows itself about in the most im- 

 probable places, or comes up in the bod of a stream half a mile or so 

 beyond the rock-garden and its bog. 



P. Jacquini. See under P. villosa. 



P. Jaffrayana is another of the remote lovely group of the Lovely- 

 flower section. It forms a tuft of little smooth and ultimately 

 powderless leaves, toothed and blunt, about an inch and a half in 

 length, from which ascends a scape of two or three, only just surpassing 

 the foliage, and carrying some half a dozen noble pale-purple blooms 

 almost in the shape of widening funnels, opening suddenly into a flat 

 cheerful face about an inch across. (From 12,000 feet up in the 

 Chumbi valley.) 



P. japonica still stands at the head of its group, and will not readily 

 be displaced. Every garden where there is water or rich soil rejoices 

 in some favourite form of this stalwart and established species, which 

 has a much longer record of friendship with England than the country 

 whose name it bears, and where alone it may be found. There are 

 good golden-eyed white forms, and there are inferior white forms 

 with blurred weeping eyes, sore-edged and conjunctivitic ; there are 

 bad magenta forms, and pale pinks of indecisive merit, and superb 

 forms of hot clear scarlet-rose like sunlit blood, or salmon suffused 

 with tomato sauce : but nothing will easily oust the best old types, 

 superb tiered giants of deep and velvety crimson. P. japonica should 

 be used to fill wide acres in the open bottoms of woodland, in such 

 multitudes that not all the rabbits of Australia could eat them down ; 

 and, once established in rich soil of garden, lake-side or stream, the 

 clumps will look after themselves and go on for ever, and so robustly 

 occupy the ground with the children that even in the most unlikely 

 corners they will persist in coming up for many years, and defy the 

 most indefatigable efforts at eradication. 



P. jesoana is a woodland Primula of the soft-leaved Geranoid group, 

 rather smaller than the Chinese species of which it continues the race 

 in Japan and the tradition across the sea ; but it has no special charm 

 to make us long for it. 



P. Jelenkae is P. x venusta, q.v. 



P. x Jiraseckiana (Tratt), the hybrid P. minima x P. villosa, whose 

 correct prior name is P. x truncata. See under P. flatnitzensis. 



(1,996) 145 IL __ K 



