PRIMULA. 



established, however, it makes up by being among the heartiest and 

 most bountiful of all : it should have a rich and springy mixture of 

 peat, sand, and loam, adequately watered from below in summer. 

 It is grateful, also, for a handsome allowance of stones in the 

 ground ; and there will be no harm in these being non-calcareous, 

 seeing that P. pedemontana is seen exclusively, in nature, on 

 granitic rocks and moors — like all the rest, indeed, of the Erythrodose 

 group at their happiest. Like these also it has its hybrid, and on 

 the Mont Cenis has revealed P. x Boidesii, Farrer, which has still the 

 habit of P. pedemontana, but is rather taller in the scape, less glandular 

 in the leaf, less russet in its glands, and carrying a rather one-sided 

 head of fewer flowers than in either parent. The blossoms are much 

 nearer to those of the other parent, P. viscosa, but fuller and wider, 

 though of the same deepened red-violet, with the same empurpled 

 narrow tube emerging from a calyx shorter in its lobes than in P. 

 pcdemontana, but still with pedemontana's characteristic wrinkles. 

 It is a variable cross ; its inferior forms are no improvement on either 

 parent, but rather the reverse; but its best are really handsome, neater 

 and dwarfer than P. viscosa, with larger, wider, brighter saucers, taller 

 and darker and of a more vinous violet than P. pedemontana, and 

 borne in a one-sided spray — having, in short, a strong look of P. x 

 Berninae, which has very similar parentage (P. hirsuta x P. viscosa). 

 P. x Boidesii is a rare plant, requiring much search among its pro- 

 genitors, but quite easily at a glance to be recognised. It may be 

 seen here and there, in the rocks and moorland of the Little Mont 

 Cenis, where P. viscosa is running threadily about imder the boulder 

 edges or in the minute whortleberry scrub of the hillocks, and 

 making dabs of red-violet among the universal pink carpet of 

 P. pedemontana. All such hybrids should be chosen in flower. 



P. pellucida is a form of P. Forbesii, q.v., and includes P. debilis 

 and P. speiuncicola — a little frail annual, cultivating caves in Yunnan. 



P. pendul flora, Franch., a lovely untried Bell-flower, akin to 

 P. nutans in needs and charms. 



P. x permixta is a false name for the hybrid-form P. xfloerJceana, 

 q.v. 



P. petiolaris stands at the head of a group that is surely some day 

 going to give the rock-garden some of its grandest Primulas. The 

 main type makes a mat of widely ramifying runners, with tufts of 

 oval toothed leaves lying about on distinct long stalks, while from the 

 central point springs an unending and dazzling mass of solitary 

 primroses in the loveliest colours. But in all its ways P. petiolaris 

 varies copiously ; species and sub-species are easily to be carved 



167 



