PRIMULA. 



staring straight up to the day. This should have the choicest of 

 morainy-mixtures when caught, and be kept constantly damp below 

 while growing. 



P. reticulata gives the family trumpet a holiday. It is only a 

 feeble P. siktimensis. 



P. x rhaetica, Gaud, is a belated synonym of P. x pubescens, 

 Jacq.. q.v. 



P. rosea is so labelled in all gardens by now, calling for its 

 relations P. clliptica. P. B mmudleri, P. Harrissii, and P.hazarica. 

 In point of fact, so common is P. " rosea " with us that it seems 

 impossible to ascertain how many of the countless Roseas we cultivate 

 are really P. rosea at all, and how many belong instead to the rather 

 larger P. elegnis (Bot. Mag., T. G437. as P. rosea) — P. rosea itself being, 

 like P. nivalis, a large aggregate, involving also such forms or species 



I'. rho lantha, P. rosijlora, and P. radicata, all tightly dwarf high- 

 ments. But our typical P. -rosea." the cosy gloss 

 of its tufts, and then, before they appear, the incredible rose-carmine 

 of those noble loose heads — these are all engraved so deep in the 

 heart of anyone who has ever handled a trowel as here to ask no 

 picture ; the tufts can be divided too at will, and seed with amazing 

 profusion even on their own account in the open bog, so that almost 

 every garden has its favourite and especial form eminent in size, 

 or fire of pink, or freedom of bloom. Such are often advertised in 

 catalogues. Any damp and even water-logged soil will admirably 

 suit each type ; it will there make enormous masses, with its roots in 

 actual running water, and will even do as much in dank and sunless 

 shady places under walls and so forth, in which, a priori, it seemed 

 madness to imprison a race whose home is among the glaciers on 

 the Roof of the World, where, amid the sapphiro and emerald 

 splendour of the crevasses and terminal ice-falls, break through, 

 wherever a tongue of grit be exposed, the mounded gold-and-ruby 

 sparkles of these astonishing children of hope. 



P. R-jsthornii xP. neurocahjx, q.v. 



P . tundifolia is, like Cerberus, at least three gentlemen at once. 

 The true species is not yet known at all in cultivation, but a relation 

 in, in Sikkim has been figured under this name in the Report of the 

 Primula < . This looks a most precious species, suggesting 



a Ranunculus bilobus, with two or three very ample round bright - 

 eyed flowers of brilliant purple-pink. In time, however, it grows 

 out of this dainty kitten-stage into a cathood of no less merit, form- 

 ing clumped tufts of upstanding violet -like leaves on long stalks, over- 

 lapping-lobed at the base, and powdered with gold beneath ; while 



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