APPENDIX. 



no less happy. It is a superb beauty, recalling A. Falconeri in the profusion 

 of its especially long and narrow rays of deeper violet-blue than in the broad- 

 rayed lavender face of F 173. The leaves are rather long and narrow, too — 

 soft and rather pointed ; leaflets sit alternately up the stout 12 to 15- 

 inch stem, and the whole plant is green and hairy. The single flower is enor- 

 mous, with an eye of intense vermilion orange, clouded round by a Saturn's 

 ring of chaffy fluff. Its fringy, ragged grace is after a very different carelessly 

 regal style of magnificence from the rather smug and fat-faced complacency 

 of lovely F 173. {A. Farreri, Sp. nova.) 



Aster Sp. (F 131), a sufficiently dear and dainty little alpine Aster, occupies 

 the upper screes of Thundercrown ; but further north-west, in the heart of the 

 range, its place is taken by F 226, a jewel pre-eminent among the best, with 

 much larger golden-eyed purple marguerites piercing everywhere on their 

 3-inch stems, from the gaunt shingle-slopes of the upmost Min S'an. This 

 little plant is hairier (especially at the base), with a grey pubescence, and the 

 basal leaves in F 131 are usually more spatulate and clearly-stalked. None 

 the less, and allowing for the floral super-eminence of F 226, I fancy that they 

 might both prove forms or developments of one species ; standing to each 

 other as does Primula No. 22, from the main range, to Primula No. 10, an out- 

 lying type from the isolated and outlying mass of Thundercrown, which has 

 also bred Aster F 131. 



Aster Sp. (246). — We now move into the group of A. acris. All the warm 

 bare loess banks, hedge-cliffs, and city embankments from J6-ni away down 

 the South Eiver Valley (not extending to Siku) are coloured in early July with 

 this Aster, which forms a tight, neat-domed bush of many stiff and sturdy 

 stems about 1 foot or 18 inches high, and twice as much across ; solid all 

 over with domed heads of little lilac-lavender stars, making a rare effect of rich 

 colour and concise, almost artificial, tidiness. (A. Thunbergii ; rather tender.) 



Aster Sp. (F 200). — This abounds on the hottest, barest loess hills and 

 stony torrid slopes about Siku. It is woody at the base, intricate and very 

 fine and wiry in leaf and habit, forming low filmy, heathlike masses, beset with 

 little lavender Asters of great charm in August and September. Whether the 

 number includes two species or not I cannot be certain, as the plant's true 

 character is hard to decipher, owing to its always being so pitilessly cropped 

 by goats on those Saharan hills. It is not, as thus seen, brilliant, but may 

 prove much more so in goatless gardens; and anyhow, even at its most 

 hard-bitten, has the fine and feathery charm of Felicia abyssinica. Seed has 

 been collected from the best forms only. {A. hispidus ; rather tender.) 



Aster Sp. (F 455). — Seems like a much glorified version of the last, from 

 similar hot situations farther down the Black Water. It is probably nearer, 

 however, to A. turbinellus, forming low, wiry, half-decumbent masses, with 

 profusion of large and brilliant flowers in October, on very long, stiff pedicels. 

 Seed from the finest forms only. 



Aster Sp. (F 456). — This replaces F 246 in the Siku district, blooming six 

 weeks later, at the beginning of September. It is notably Galatelloid, with 



495 



