APPENDIX. 



of the Satanee Alps, while across the intervening range abounds P. lichiangensis 

 on the warmer, drier slopes and boulder edges of Thundercrown. That inter- 

 vening range, with the foothills opposite Satanee, is the home of Primula No. 5, 

 a most lovely species, far superior in grace and charm (as I think) to P. Veitchii 

 and P. lichiangensis, of which it has precisely the soft foliage and lush wood- 

 land habit (it is singularly small and frail in the crown) ; but its beautiful big 

 flowers of vinous rose are not flat stars but shallow saucers, and instead of 

 being borne in stiffly-upstaring umbels, are carried loosely and gracefully in 

 an almost pendulous and one-sided spray, in general effect recalling that notable 

 wide-faced form of P. viscosa which yields P. x Cruris to P. marginata on the 

 Col de la Croix. (Occasionally, but very rarely, a second tier of blossom unfolds 

 above the first.) Above Satanee P. No. 5 occurs happily, though rather stunted, 

 in the hot crevices of sunny primary rocks from which coppice has evidently 

 been cleared ; but its real home is in deep, cool places and mossy river-banks 

 of the woodland, and it is particularly fine and lovely in the dense darkness 

 of a little Bamboo-brake in the forest zone of the Satanee Alps, growing in 

 very rich clammy loam, consisting almost wholly of decayed vegetation. Here 

 it blooms in early May ; October seed proved too scanty to distribute, but I 

 hope that dormant crowns may also help to increase the stock. (P. Silvia, Sp. 

 nova.) 



Primula Sp. No. 6 (F 74) {P. viola-grandis) is especially beautiful, im- 

 portant, and interesting. It is a very far northerly and most unexpected exten- 

 sion of the weird Omphalogramma group, with solitary flowers like gigantic mon- 

 strous violets or Pinguiculas before the full expansion of the leaves. Hitherto 

 the most northern species of the group has been P. Franchetii, which is rare in 

 the Alps of the Mekong-Salween, very far to the south, in uppermost Yunnan ; 

 the nearest relation to P. viola-grandis, P. Delavayi, lives yet further to the 

 south, on the flanks of Tsang-s'an, and differs, inter alia, in having its stems 

 beset with brown membranaceous bracts. Thus the whole depth of Szechuan 

 intervenes between the older Omphalogrammas of Yunnan and their new 

 cousin of Kansu. P. viola-grandis has already been splendidly figured in the 

 Chronicle, so I need not expatiate on its prognathous great blue-purple blossom, 

 with ears laid stiffly back, and lip stuck stiffly out (but the bud opens a regular 

 star of intense violet, lightening to a more lucent tone as it opens out, and 

 the segments set to work reflexing and protruding). It only remains to describe 

 the enormous subsequent expansion of the foliage, which develops heart-shaped 

 blades like those of a fat Viola hirta or F. odorata, but densely thick like flannel, 

 of very dark opaque dusty green with paler veins, lying flopped about on the 

 black soil, too heavy for the elongated fleshy footstalks of glandular pinkness. 

 P. viola-grandis may, perhaps, prove easier than its cousins ; but it has a 

 very rigid choice of habitats. It is never found except up cool, westerly-facing, 

 shady exposures of big limestone cliffs in the Alps of Satanee and Thunder- 

 crown, hugging the underside of ledge-sods in clammy moist soil of loam or 

 vegetable mould, and descending freely into the upper reaches of the Siku gorges, 

 where they go lost at last in sombre inaccessible canons of gloom and dankness. 



(1,996) 513 II.— 2 K 



