APPENDIX. 



August they ought to mimic snow and gorse as they do on the cool green moun- 

 tains of Tibet. 



Potentilla Sp. (F 214) is a real gem of a very different kidney. It belongs 

 only to the highest alpine earth-pans and cliffs on the crests of the Min S'an 

 and Thundercrown at 14,000 to 15,000 feet, where, on the bald, bare loam it 

 forms tight, massive hassocks, often a yard across, of bright, lucent-green 

 foliage, so finely divided and curled as to make the effect of some hairless glossy 

 small Saxifrage of the Ceratophylla Group, amassed into a tight, hard dome. 

 So the plant grows, from a thick, woody trunk ; and in mid-July the whole 

 hump is covered with a galaxy of almost stemless single little golden stars, 

 in shape and size and colour like those of a diminished P. verna, with a blotch 

 of orange at the base of each citron-yellow petal. This compact beauty, in 

 fact, makes a golden third in a trinity with pink P. nitida and snowy P. Clusiana, 

 though even tighter and harder in its masses than P. nitida. (P. biflora: a failure.) 



Primula. — In this great race 1914 has been delightfully fertile, the Nivalis- 

 Maximowiczi Group being especially well represented. Several most interest- 

 ing extensions of races or groups have been recorded, and I cannot help sus- 

 pecting that Nos. 1, 5, 6, 10, 13, 15, 22, 23 may prove to be good new species. 

 So far as I can discern, the season has yielded 25 species, new or old, though 

 perhaps one or two of these may fade into others, and certainly there are 

 more than one concealed under No. 19. (Written in 1914.) 



Primula Sp. No. 1 (F 38) should certainly belong to the Davidi Group, 

 but that it utterly lacks the brown investiture of scales, and in all its habit 

 and habits precisely repeats P. acaulis, with clumps of crispj crinkly, sharp- 

 toothed leaves, with pale veins, a lettuce-like succulency, and a microscopic 

 veneer of green-velvet glands. From this rises a scape of 2 to 4 inches, 

 bearing a loose olyanthus head of large and lovely rose-mauve flowers in March, 

 with a ten-rayed eye of green and white from the pale throat. Not only does 

 this plant repeat the tufts of the Primrose, but it also occupies the typical 

 Primrose-sites in all the forests from Chago-ling to the gorges of Thundercrown, 

 between 7000 and 8000 feet, growing in the opener places of the woodland, 

 by path-sides, on lightly-coppiced banks, or in the wide, flat stretches of Ane- 

 mone nemorosa, dappling the ground beneath deciduous trees. It loves the 

 clammy rich loam of the Primrose too, but especially luxuriates in rotten 

 timber, forming magnificent crowded colonies in the moss along aged and 

 decayed windfalls in the forest. The calyx, with its lobes, pedicels, and scape, 

 lengthen and stouten and amplify remarkably in seed. For this, owing to our 

 enforced flight, we had to depend on specimens hurriedly dug up in the woods 

 of Satanee, carried off in boxes, and grown on to ripen in the hot backyard of 

 the Yamen at Siku. On this accordingly I build no great hope ; but plants 

 have been since sent, which I trust may be enough to introduce so really first- 

 class a Primula into cultivation, where it has all the look of thriving robustly 

 and permanently. So far, it is the only general woodland Primula, exactly 

 taking the place of P. acaulis in its limited region. (P. hylophila, Sp. nova: a 

 failure.) 



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