PRIMULA. 



Japan, but whereas P. Sicboldii, like Fair Inez, was gone into the 

 \\ by 1873, P. kisoana has not got there even yet — an omission 

 the more surprising that this also has been a pet subject of Japanese 

 horticulture, at least for two centuries past, and fully deserves all 

 its estimation there on account of its beautiful flowers of brilliant 

 deep r 



P. Kitaibdiana belongs to the group of P. integrifolia, and may be 

 known at once by the yellowish-grey tone of its oval leaves, very 

 dense with glandular colourless hairs, and intensely sticky and 

 stinking. The stem is about 2 or 3 inches high, shorter than the 

 foliage, and carrying one or two rather large blooms of lilac-pink or 

 rose, with a pale glandular throat and tube. It is a rare species, not 

 likely to be met with by the traveller in trodden ways, for it is found 

 only in the alps of Croatia, Bosnia, and the Herzegovina, in high 

 crevices and shingles of the limestone. 



P. Knvihiana has come into cultivation in the last few years, and 

 proves vastly more splendid than the rather spindly specimens 

 figured by Pax. Its rosette is rather like that of a most magnificent 

 P. frondosa, crinkled and waved in the powdery grey foliage ; the 

 stem rises stoutly up for 3 or 4 inches, as sturdy as a Denticulata, and 

 with flowers to continue the comparison, such is the almost artificial 

 opulence of the round head of blossom it has to carry, the corollas being 

 large, of soft lilac-rose, and so spaced in the royal orb as not to crowd 

 upon each other, but show their individual outlines, which have a 

 wariness that adds to the sumptuous effect of the whole portly plant. 

 It is of perfectly ready culture in good and well-drained soil ; it not only 

 seeds but throws out rooting runners ; it not only throws out rooting 

 runners but makes younglings from root-cuttings, with the most 

 admirable readiness. Its home is in Shensi, where it has two forms, 

 of which ours should clearly be the major, but that this is the miserable 

 thing of the Paxian plate, thus leaving us in wonder as to how worth- 

 less must be the lesser variety, P. K. brevipes, which Pax indeed figures 

 as neater in the leaf and fuller in the head — but far indeed from the 

 full-fed amplitude of the P. Knvihiana we possess, thanks to Purdom 

 in 1910. 



P. x Kolbiana is the very rare natural hybrid between P. viscosa and 

 P. oenensis, which has once been quoted by Kellerer from the Monte 

 Cimone above the Val Seriana. It has the woody habit, the stinking 

 foliage of P. viscosa, but the glands in which it is clothed have the 

 russet colour inherited from P. oenensis. And that is all wo know of 

 P. X Kolbiana: 1 expect it is also all we need to know. 



P. x KraetUiana has been quoted, on the strength of one specimen, 



148 



