APPENDIX. 



partially to the trunkless, many-flowered development which is typical Af. 

 horriduh. 



M. ru.dis has yielded what appears to be a variety : M . r. intermedia, with 

 the flowers all springing from the base as in M. horridula. This plant, how- 

 ever, exists only in fragmentary specimens, and is still so obscure that it need 

 not concern us at present. Meanwhile I also suspect that what some gardeners 

 are now calling M. " Wardii " is merely M. rudis on some occasions, and M. 

 speciosa on others. M. rvdis has dark prickles, an orange stigma and yellow 

 anthers, while M. Prattii has pale prickles, the stigma greenish, and the anthers 

 creamy white. This alone should serve always to differentiate these two species 

 at a glance. 



M. speciosa is yet another Prickly Poppy in this group, whose blossoms are a 

 disappointment in our gardens. Its feathered foliage distinguishes it immediately 

 from Af. Prattii, M. rudis, and M. racemosa, while there are but few and small 

 bracts beneath the flower shoots up the main trunk, instead of the numerous 

 and conspicuous ones that mark the spires of M . aculeata, M. sinuata, and M. 

 latifolia. Otherwise, it has the same habit as this assemblage of blue Poppies. 

 (The garden-plant of this name is ugly, and may be false.) 



M. venusta holds out better hopes than most of being perennial. It is a 

 cousin of Af. bella, and so close in general appearance to M . concinna as to suggest 

 at first being a mere variety. But here the leaves are feathered into rarer 

 rounded lobings (very rarely entire) ; from the tuffet of these arise stems of 

 6 to 14 inches, each bearing a big four-petalled blossom of deep wine-purple with 

 orange anthers. It loves the same situations as M. concinna, and is distinguished 

 by the depth to which the valves of its capsule open when ripe. As yet another 

 of Forrest's treasures, it should ere long be in all our hands. 



M. ' : Wardii " has been much too prematurely proclaimed and issued. It 

 seems at present most probable that there is no real M. " Wardii," 

 and that everything sent out under this name belongs to Af. rudis, M. Prattii, 

 Af. speciosa, or even Af. racemosa. 



PRIMULA. 



Addenda, and Further Information. 



So many are the new Primulas now pouring in on us from China and the 

 Indian Frontier, that panting type toils after them in vain, and these volumes 

 should have a supplement every month if they are to continue up to date. 

 However, here is the latest news, to July 1917, of fresh species in this race, 

 hardly now to be recognised, many of them, under the freakish Greekish 

 names in which they are pranked out, in the deficiency of any more Latin ones. 

 Indeed, so many of the new Primulas have Greek names, and all the new Meco- 

 nopsids have Latin ones (except my own Af. Psilonomma : I am not responsible 

 for Af . " lepida," whom I myself had planned to call M . Eucharis), which seems, 



480 



