APPENDIX. 



northerly ranges of the Da-Tung. In the Minchow district it trenches on cul- 

 tivated land, and there, at the edges of culture-patches on the rounded green 

 hills, it becomes quite unrecognisably splendid in. the steep enriched embank- 

 ments down the slope, waxing into masses of foliage a foot across and almost 

 as deep, with 40 or 50 great swaying vases of lavender all hovering at 

 once, on 1 or 2 feet stems, above the tangle of leaves below — thus making 

 it evident that M. quintupUnervia, while it should answer happily to fair alpine 

 cultivation, should also be handsomely responsive to specially generous treat- 

 ment. It blooms from June to August ; on Thundercrown there was a notable 

 little rocky grot which in June was filled with a rose-scented jungle of rose- 

 pink Peonies, above and amid which floated the innumerable expanded blue 

 butterflies of the Poppy. The number of petals, though usually 4, can often 

 be 6 ; and it may be noted that the original diagnosis seems to have been 

 made from specimens smaller than the usual type of M. quintupUnervia, and 

 far inferior to the best. (The Harebell Poppy. ) 



Meconopsis Prattii (F 136).— Seed was distributed as M. rudis, but 

 this glorious blue Poppy is M. Prattii. In Fedde's key to the race, M. rudis 

 has stem-leaves up to the middle of the spire, while M. racemosa has neither 

 bracts nor stem-leaves at all. Unfortunately, in the diagnosis of M. racemosa, 

 a full description is given of the stem-leaves already declared to be non-existent ! 

 My quite different Kansu plant, sent out as M. rudis, is undoubtedly M. Prattii, 

 and M. Prattii alone. The specimens and seedlings will, however, repav investi- 

 gation, as these two Poppies are not as yet of any final and absolute distinctness. 

 F 136, at least, takes two clearly-marked forms ; so far as I can judge, from 

 Thundercrown up into the foothills of the Min S'an, it is a dense and stocky plant 

 forming a close 8- to 10-inch mace of gorgeous dawn-blue blossoms, woven of 

 silk and opals. In the highest craggy Alps above Ardjeri it takes a new char- 

 acter ; the stems are taller, darker, barer, the pedicels are very much longer, 

 so that the inflorescence is a loose and irregular broken flight of flowers, instead 

 of a solid huddled mass. (This may, of course, be merely a later stage of blos- 

 som, yet had to me the look of a clear varietal, if not specific, difference.) All 

 the seed sent belongs to the stocky Thundercrown form ; in every variety this 

 Poppy (or Foppies), it must be noted, stands apart from all its grass-loving 

 kin, in being always and only found in the gaunt screes and stone-slopes and 

 precipices of the highest limestone or shaly ridges from 12,000 to 14,000 feet. 

 In other words, it is born and made for the moraine, and there should be sown 

 again and again, that its biennial splendour may annually repeat the glory of 

 light with which its dense spires of amassed azures illuminate the vast and 

 lifeless stone-slopes on the highest crests of Tibet. Every part of the growth 

 is virulently prickly, and the fierce hardened thorns of the fruiting stage 

 make its sturdy pyramids of capsules an agony to collect, unless with a 

 mailed fist and a pair of tongs. (Painting and photograph.) (The Celestial 

 Poppy.) 



Meconopsis punicea (F 175) far surpasses all English description and all 

 English effort, as you begin to see it, bloodily flaunting in and out of the scantier 



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