PRIMULA. 



P. longolcnsis stands beside P. sinuata in a group of its own. It is 

 a small plant with little fat horny-rimmed leaves, blunt and scalloped 

 and stalked, lobed at their base. The stems just overtop the foliage, 

 being a little over an inch high, each carrying one flower — an 

 inch-long tubular bell with rather narrow lobes at the mouth, each just 

 nicked into two more. 



P. tosaensis belongs to the group of P. Reinii, but comes from 

 realms so southerly of the Rising Sun that there is little hope that it 

 will be of any use in our gardens. 



P. Traillii, Watt, is a species imperfectly described, and so far un- 

 known in the garden ; though greatly to bo desired, according to its 

 author, who found it growing at high altitudes in upper Kulu, in soft 

 powder-dry woodland soil under the shadow of large rocks — despite the 

 fact that it belongs apparently to the Sikkimensis group, though, apart 

 from its habitat, rather resembling P. japonica, but that the flowers 

 are rather smaller, and of a lovely pale-blue. Unfortunately, though 

 P. Traillii seems to have two blooming-seasons, so that Sir G. Watt 

 was able to get ripe seed, as well as revel in the blossoms of his find, this 

 seed got mixed in its packet, and, when at last it came home to Wisley 

 and germinated with much gladness, the promises thus raised proved 

 to yield nothing else but P. involucrata, though confidingly described 

 by Mr. Wilson in the Gardener's Chronicle under the name of Traillii, 

 which they ought to have had a better right to bear. The real species 

 accordingly remains a treasure still to seek. 



P. x Trisannae is a false name of Gusmus for P. x Heerii, q.v. 



P. x irancata. See under P. flatnitzensis. 



P. tyrolensis is the only close relation of P. Allionii, though separated 

 from it by the width of Northern Italy ; for, while P. Allionii belongs 

 only to a very small district of the limestones in the Mii'itime Alps, 

 so P. tyrolensis occupies another, hardly larger, in the limestones of the 

 South' m Dolomites, where it may sometimes be seen in the crevices 

 of the cliff, forming vast ancient loose cushions, the rosette of the year 

 springing at the end of a trunk matted with the dried relics of a cen- 

 tury. The plant does not form the dense masses of the other, and its 

 rosettes are much smaller, the tiny leaves being almost round, toothed, 

 stemless, and very sticky, and stinking if squeezed ; while the flowers 

 are of the same size, but of thinner texture, and of a more aniline 

 red-lilac colour, usually with a white eye, and sometimes with a fading 

 blui red star of darker colour radiating from its centre. Better and 

 • forms of this, as of all the others, may be chosen hi Juno when 

 the blossom is at its full ; but it does not very readily vary, and the 

 thin mag<-ntu-rosy stars, large and abundant though they be, are 



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