APPENDIX. 



could judge from one glimpse of a lingering bloom in early June, is pretty and 

 spidery and pink, suggesting a gigantic Bletia, carried solitary on a stem of 

 4 inches, not more than one, it seems (and not always that), being produced 

 from each small tuft of foliage. A seed-pod has been sent, and also a few 

 pseudo bulbs, collected by a coolie striding barefoot along the face of the 

 boulder, as a fly walks lightly along the ceiling. This, also, died of the home- 

 joun. 



Polemonium Sp. (F 141) is general up the Border, in all characteristic Pole- 

 monium places, in river-banks, and shingles of the lower alpine region, and in 

 and out of the light alpine glades and woodland. It is probably only the tan- 

 guticum variety of ubiquitous P. coeruleum, but is very much more graceful 

 than the type, with loose and scattered showers of blossom on stems of 12 to 

 24 inches, from early summer onwards. Only a small pinch of seed was after 

 all collected, from high in the Siku gorge ; so that F 141 will probably not 

 be distributed till the resulting plants of this have next season yielded their 

 abundant crop. 



Polygonatum Sp. (F 274) (? P. roseum) is a dear little fine-leaved whorled 

 Solomon's Seal of 4 inches or so, that freely spreads into carpets of its larch- 

 like shoots, in the opener alpine places and scant turf round the base and ledges 

 of rock-ribs on Thundercrown, etc., beset with starry flowers of mauve-pink 

 in June, which are followed in autumn by berries of brilliant glowing blood- 

 colour. 



Potentilla Sp. (F 188) is that fruticosa-Veitchii type, of which there are 

 now so many in cultivation. The pure white P. Yeitchii is abundant all over 

 the foothills of the Siku Alps, etc., and only towards the highest limit, in the 

 turf at 12,000 feet, does it seem to pass into a yellow form. At least, and until 

 closer investigation decides differently, I am inclined to assume that all this 

 large range of white-golden fruticosa-Potentillas belong in reality to one species. 

 As you advance into the Tibetan Alps opposite J6-ni the type gets better and 

 the bushes larger. The valley bottoms are filled with masses of deep and 

 brilliant gold, while a little higher up the white form comes into fuller posses- 

 sion, and the grassy folds of the box-pleated upper Alps seem as if mounded 

 with masses of snow in August in their couloirs, with banked dark forest on 

 one side and the emerald open lawn on the other, in which the Potent illas 

 are so profusely peppered in bushes of 2 or 3 feet, concealed from sight by 

 their blossom. The deep golden type passes into the pure white by innumer- 

 able gradations of cream, amber, citron, and butter-yellow — intermediate 

 colour-forms (or hybrids) ; seed sent out embraces all these, having been col- 

 lected not only from the snowy and golden extremities of the type, but from 

 a little bank in the Mirgo Valley, where every link between them was in rich 

 abundance and the loveliest blend of every shade of saffron, sulphur, and cream 

 — it being specially noted that the paler forms were perceptibly paler and 

 greyer in the seed-husk than the rich brown of the yellower forms. All these 

 should make masses of lovely, small, tight bushes, and deserve to be planted 

 in bi» sweeps amid grass on the fringes of woodland and shrubbery, where in 



510 



