PRIMULA. 



a secondary cross from P. X venusta on to P. marginata. All these are 

 perfectly easy to grow ; they all multiply readily from cuttings, but 

 most of them, from seed, will show every kind of reversion into dulled 

 and damaged colours, returning towards P. auricula. 



P. x Venzoi is probably the impostor that emanates from nurseries 

 under the name of P. Muretiana. It is the hybrid of P. tyrolensis x P. 

 Wulfeniana, a willing mass-forming little clump, most various, but dif- 

 fering typically from P. tyrolensis in being larger, stiffer, glossier in the 

 more ample leaf, which has an indefinite horny hem, but occasionally 

 a vague toothing or so at the edge. It is smaller altogether than 

 P. Wulfeniana, shorter in the similarly empurpled flower-stem, and 

 smaller in the similarly stiffish and glossyish lessened leaves. The 

 flowers are large, two or three in a cluster, and of a rather impure 

 lilac-rose, often with deeper blots at the base of their lobes. It grows 

 very readily in any reasonable conditions (and in unreasonable ones 

 no less), and may be pulled to pieces unresenting at any moment. 

 Those who wish to see it for themselves must seek the ranges where 

 P. Wulfeniana meets P. minima in the mountains of Venetia about 

 the ridges of Cimolais and over the Val di Torno. 



P. veris is the aboriginal name that held the Primrose and the 

 Cowslip and the Oxlip and all their children in its vast embrace. 



P. verticillata is the tropical Arabian Primula with tiered yellow 

 flowers, which, by its kinsman or sub-species P. floribunda, has yielded 

 a far better greenhouse plant than either, in P. x hewensis, a chance- 

 gift of the gods. P. Boveana is a microform of the species, and has often 

 been confused with it ; the Bot. Mag. plate of P. verticillata in 1828 

 in reality represents P. Boveana. And P. simensis is another. 



P. Viali, Franch., is a hairless small species, of which, on present 

 information, P. Littoniana seems only an expanded version. 



P. Viali, Pax, contains P. deflexa, P. gracilenta, and P. V/atsoni 

 as well. 



P. villosa replaces P. hirsuta in the Noric Alps, and very often in 

 catalogues. It is another clump-forming alpine, not easy, like many 

 of the Erythrodose section, to tell from its cousins, except by its 

 geographical distribution. For they each occupy a different district, 

 so that it is easy enough in nature to know which kind you have come 

 upon ; but the happy information fails in the garden, hi the case of a 

 bought specimen, so that in the personality of P. villosa what must be 

 looked for, to distinguish it from P. hirsuta, are rather longer, limper 

 leaves, more densely vested in longer darker coarser fur ; and taller 

 stems, carrying their flowers on rather shorter pedicels, and thus 

 in rather closer heads, though otherwise their beauty of big ample 

 (i,096) 193 n.— n 



