RAMONDIA. 



linnets on a text), wipes out all the rest of the race ; there is also a 

 tragically pale form, whose blossoms seem as if they were carved 

 from lavender-tinted snow, and a white one of purity and brilliance 

 and solidity unsurpassed, with the golden-scarlet pointil at the centre 

 enhancing its candour. (Servia and Bulgaria.) 



R. x permixta stands between R. serbica and R. Nataliae and has 

 no distinguishing claims. 



R. pyrenaica represents a most ancient outlier of the family (whose 

 main home is the Balkans, with R. pyrenaica breaking out far away 

 in the Pyrenees), with an unbridged gap of many a hundred mile 

 between its nearest relations (though there is at least a rumour now 

 of the plant's being recorded in one valley or so in an alpine chain of 

 Central Europe). It is a noble species, very old in cultivation, and 

 ranked by Parkinson among the Primulas, to some of whose clumps, 

 indeed, the great rosette of hairy dull-green leaves, shaggy and ear- 

 shaped and crinkled, do have a resemblance almost as rough as them- 

 selves ; but how different are the lilac-blue potato-flowers, three or four 

 on a stem of 4 inches, springing all round the crown, with five lobes 

 to the corolla, and a pointil and eye of orange and gold. Neither the 

 white form, nor the pink, is quite worthy of the love and the prices 

 bestowed on it, for it is usually inferior to the type, thin and 

 ragged in outline, no less than washy and feeble in colour (all 

 Ramondias seem to vary, like Primula, in amplitude of contour, as 

 well as in brilliance of tone, and so should be bought or collected in 

 flower). And as for the Ramondias pompously sent out as R. querci- 

 folia, R. peregrina, and R. leucopetala, these are merely forms of the 

 quite ordinary type or albino, thus insidiously trying to slink into 

 circulation under names and prices grossly beyond their deserts. 

 The clumps of all the race may be divided, or leaf-cuttings may be 

 struck in heat as with Begonia, but the best method of propagation is 

 by seeds ; these, being microscopically minute, and in number as the 

 stars of the Galaxy, should be sown on the surface of a pot, filled with 

 fine peaty mixture, and then stood in a saucer of water with a piece 

 of brown paper (for darkness) held down over its top by a pane of 

 glass (for close humidity) ; they should there be carefully watched from 

 day to day, and will germinate like a cress, and be good little flowering 

 crowns in a couple of seasons. 



R. serbica, like its hybrid R. x permixta, sinks down into obscurity 

 between R. pyrenaica and R. Nataliae ; it is more saucer-shaped than 

 either in the more cupped flowers, which arc smaller (like the whole 

 plant), with a shorter style, five lobes, and the general colouring of 

 R. pyrenaica, rather than the braver lavender brilliance of R. Nataliae. 



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