PRIMULA. 



down ; it is generous with many dainty scapes of 4 or 5 inches, each 

 carrying one or several long-tubed violet bowls on graceful pedicels, 

 and cloven in the lobe. 



P. spathulifolia is the form of P. minutissima once called its mere 

 variety spaihvlaki, but now raised to specific rank on account of its 

 larger flowers and foliage. 



P. spectabilis is the most royal of the four royal Arthritic Primulas — 

 a majesty confined to one small district of the Alps, from the utmost 

 ridges of Judicaria, across Monte Baldo, to Monte Summano and 

 the high sunny hill-tops of Venetia, until it is stopped by the 

 advance, from the East, of P. Wulfeniana. It would almost seem 

 as if P. spectalilis had its especial cradle on the Cima Tombea, 

 so marvellous there is the abundance and glory of its masses, 

 cushioning all the long grassy ripples of the topmost downs to 

 the summit in cascades of cushions covered in their time with 

 such a profusion of sturdy stems crowded with those full-fed wavy 

 splendours of white-eyed pink, that all the mountain blushes in 

 your face as you cross from the Northern side (where the Primula 

 is rare though lovely in isolated tufts and clumps in the rocks), and 

 come over suddenly into the full sunlight of the rippling emerald 

 aretes and lawns that range away towards the precipices of the 

 Daphne. Each crown there sends up its stems ; and as the most 

 casual tussock you may kick out by the pathside will consist of some 

 eighty odd crowns, it may be imagined what spectacle is offered to 

 the mountain marmots in the first week of June. For the flowers in 

 themselves are enormous and comfortable ; while no 3-inch stem of the 

 lot would consider its powers properly employed if it were not carrying 

 more than four of them. The plant must be seen at home in glory to 

 be believed : it must also be so seen to be collected. For among the 

 rosy millions lurk hassocks of especial loveliness ; and the eye of 

 devotion, in the course of a day that dulls the hope of heaven, may 

 select the richest harvest of notabilities among the rest — forms ox-eyed 

 as Hera with their clear white centres against the pink undulations of 

 their face, forms of colour especially rich and clear, blossoms especially 

 round and full, wavy at the edge, or folded or fringed most exquisitely : 

 forms white as milk (but starry in outline), forms like apple-blossoms, 

 all of snow within and sun-flushed snow without, forms as blue as 

 P. marginata and as red as P. japonica — forms so dizzying in their 

 various loveliness that in the end one swoons before the problem 

 as to which are the best of the best among these beautiful myriads. 

 In cultivation P. spectabilis bears out its promise of heartiness on the 

 hills : it is impossible to harm it, in any rich deep loam or peaty 



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