PRIMULA. 



no specially worthy fulfilment of the tiny foliage and the cushioned 

 habit, which has given hope of a charm as potent as P. Allionii's. In 

 cultivation it likes moraine, or a sunny deep crevice in calcareous loam, 

 with perhaps a little lightening enrichment of peat and sand ; and 

 it can freely be divided, while shoots taken off in August can easily 

 be struck as cuttings. 



P. tzetzouenensis belongs doubtfully to the group of P. sikJcimensis, 

 though its leaves are so definitely stalked as to suggest that it should 

 go rather with the Heart -leaved group, of which P. rotundifolia may 

 be taken as a type. No more can at present be said of it. 



P. Umbrella resembles P. kichanensis in many respects. It makes 

 a neat rosette of powdery-grey oval-pointed leaves, curling along the 

 roughly toothed edges ; the sturdy mealy little stalk comes up in the 

 middle, and rises 2 or 3 inches high. And round it on their pedicels 

 stand out the large lavender-blue flowers in such a neat radiating ring 

 that an umbrella is not so much suggested as a merry-go-round at a 

 village fair, swinging out all the blossoms at the full length of their 

 attachment -cords, as round and round the stem goes whirling at full 

 pressure of the machinery, till the cars swim out straight at right angles 

 to their axis, like the joy-boats at Earl's Court. It is no robust 

 thriver. 



P. uniflora goes modestly in the matter of a name, and is guilty 

 of under-statement. For its flowers are almost invariably two ample 

 pendent bells from ample calyces, hanging from the top of a powdery 

 stem of 4 inches or so — P. uniflora being most closely allied to 

 P. Reidii, but that it is altogether frailer, with lilac-blue or losy 

 bells, and oblong little leaves, very shaggy, and very deeply feathered 

 into toothed lobes, standing out on foot-stalks longer than themselves. 

 High-alpine Sikkim, and for the special care devoted to the group. 



P. urticifolia inhabits rocks like the coneys, but it is not at all 

 a feeble folk, as you see its delicious colonies outlining the cool, 

 dank moss-crannies of the shadiest limestone ghylls that occur rarely 

 in the granitic wilderness of the Da-Tung Alps. With its tiny tufts 

 of tiny foliage, gashed into ferny strips, and its lovely profusion of 

 big pink flowers, P. urticifolia quite absurdly suggests a hybrid of 

 P. minima and P. bella, with the beauties of both parents reinforced, 

 ihe diagnosis of this now visually realised treasure in Pax is so frigid 

 as to fill me with fear lest I may also have underrated other charmers 

 likewise known only, at the time of writing, from similar descriptions. 



P. vaginata is another, poor-flowered lilac species, of the Geranioid 

 group, with soft rounded leaves, and an obviously half-hardy temper, 

 undeserving of love or longing. 



191 



