PRIMULA. 



P J marduni need not troubL hile with its affinities. It 



is a tiny tufted species from Bhutan, with densely neat rosettes of 

 overlapping little leathern leaves, powdered underneath. The crown 

 .1. but of its flowers no tale is yet told. 



P. Juliae has taken the plunge into civilisation amid cries of general 

 applause, and now swims so eagerly on the tumbled sea of horticulture 

 that its value in money must rapidly go down, as its value in the garden 

 no less rapidly goes up. It has only been in cultivation some three or 

 four years, but was only discovered in 1901, and then in the Caucasus, 

 which gives great hope of further treasures yet lurking in byeways, 

 even close at hand, of our overtrodden earth. In the Caucasus it is 

 to be seen in wet dripping rocks and under the spray of waterfalls. 

 In the garden it has no such fads, but continues to appreciate all the 

 moisture it can get, though growing quite happily in an}' rich soil, where 

 it makes Luge masses of very attractive smooth and sombre little crinkly 

 heart-shaped leaves on stalks, from which, alone on their stems, 

 comes a profuse procession of starry Primroses in spring, autumn, and 

 winter, varying in tones of soft or virulent lilac that would sometimes 

 be called magenta if the plant were still not priced at five shillings. 

 But they are always somehow beautiful, and are harmonised perhaps 

 by the blurred or pencilled crimson at the base of the blossoms, which 

 so have the happiest effect, nestling in such radiant abundance among 

 their dark leaves through the darker hours of the year. And then, 

 when tired of blooming. Julia's Primrose takes her walks abroad, on 

 runners that strike fresh root and widen the lovely patch. And is 

 :ly multiplied by the seed that she no less freely produces. 



P. JuribeUa has so far only one recorded station. It is the natural 

 hybrid between P. minima and P. tyrohnsis. and is found in the 

 grass wiih P. minima its mother, on the limestone ridges by the 

 Rolle Pass beneath the frowning a*nd tremendous peak of the Cimon 

 della Pala. Even the most casual eye could distil guish it among the 

 others, for the tiny leaves of the rosettes do not close in a straight 

 toothed cut across their end as in P. minima, hut are oval and toothed 

 finely and irregularly round th. ( ir outline; they are also not glossy 

 like Minima's, but of a more opaque green, because they inherit a 

 of sticky glands from P. tyrohnsis. From this, on 

 the other hand, it may be known by never being found with its father 

 in th while it has something of Minima's gloss, all Minima's 



mat-form ; r.g habit, and nothing of the dense columnar formations of 

 P. t . which has the rosettes standing each on a dense aged 



trunk of dead ones from m In fact the plant 



is very much closer to P. minima, and has Minima's flowers,' carried 



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