PRIMULA. 



some setting), or is so robust that, in the end of the summer, its added 

 crowns of the year may readily be removed from the main stock and 



a on for the next season. Care, however, should always be I 

 with this, as with all Primulas, to see the specimen you are buying in 

 flower. Pick it out then and there, order it. and make sure you get 

 it ; for the species, like the race and its hybrids, is as variable as 

 woman, and the best should as carefully be chosen of the one as of the 

 other, and artificially fertilised accordingly. 



P. Widfeniana is the las: and smallest of the four royal Arthritic 

 Primulas of the European Alps, where it occupies the Eastern lime- 

 stones, on the same high and sunny ridges of grass along the necks of 

 the mountains as afford such revelling-gronnd for P. spectabilis on 

 the Cima Tombea. Even so grows P. Widfeniana on the upper lawns 

 of the Karawanken, not growing into huge rounded hassocks, but 

 extending over the herbage in solid flat masses of glossy foliage, hidden 

 in their time from view by the myriads of short purple stalks, some- 

 times touched with powder, bearing heads of enormous ample and 

 wavy-edged flowers of richest rosy -mauve, with a white eye of fur at 

 their throat . It is the lowest in habit of the group, but in beauty stands 

 high, and forms such matted masses, gleaming emerald in the grass of 

 the mountains (which they occupy like many square yards together 

 of battalioned glossy plantains, threaded in and out by the pale sap- 

 phires of Oentiana Froelichii), that even the calloused chronicler of the 

 race has to break into cries of joy over its " lordly rosy carpets." Note 

 that the stiff and shining little pointed leaves of the notably clear and 

 lucent green rosettes have a most characteristic tendency to curl 

 inwards at their edge, and are bordered with the broad family band of 

 membrane, which here is glandular at the rim. The lobes of the calyx 

 are broad and blunt, not half the whole length of the calyx, and the 

 2-inch stem does not carry more than three flowers, and lengthens 

 mightily and blushes more shiniry after blooming. It is quite as easy 

 as its three sisters, in the same conditions : the peer of the best. And, 

 like the other two ; far superior to P. glaucescens, the least brilliant 

 and the most common of the four, though no heartier than the rest. 



P. yargongensis is a gorgeous and desirable treasure in the group 

 of P. glacialis, with ground-hugging rosettes of thick oblong little 

 stalked leaves, and great brilliant blossoms so splendid in their colour 

 that it has to overflow into the calyces as well. 



P. yedoeneia is P. jesoana, q.v. 



P. yunnanensis, from limestone crevices by the Li-kiang Glacier, 

 is after the habit of P. kichanensis (from which it chiefly differs in 

 having its flowers on long foot -stalks of their own instead of sitting 



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