APPENDIX. 



Usually it is found in clumps here and there, its piercingly refulgent violet 

 flames hovering like blue sparks of electricity in May from the gloomy walls ; 

 but in one station I know, higher up on the open Alps of the Ridge, it so abounds 

 in little western couloirs and on a little turfy saddle beneath the cliff, so runs 

 riot in loam or red earth or peat-mould, and so gaily flickers in and out of 

 the minute 3-inch Rhododendron scrub, that those few and limited stations 

 are all a shimmering dance of Violets in early summer, and there at least the 

 plant gives better hope of a robust and hearty habit. As might be imagined 

 from its preposterous flower and length of tube, it is a poor, scant seeder, hardly 

 5 per cent, of the blooms (which are not by any means sent up from every 

 crown either) resulting in the tall 6- to 8-inch seed-stem and its round cap- 

 sule atop. I was late upon its final scene too, so that the distribution of 

 seed will have been sadly niggardly. However, I felt profoundly grateful and 

 fortunate to get what I did, the 4 or 5 last capsules lingering on the moun- 

 tain side, with the seed lying loose in its saucer, at the mercy of any moment's 

 flow of wind, or dash of hail. In autumn the whole thing dies back to a white 

 scaly bud like a wee bulb of Lilium ; some of these have also been sent, and 

 I hope may arrive alive. (Painting and photograph.) It never germinated. 



Primula Sp. No. 7 (F 86) is almost certainly a cousin of P. Uchiangensis, 

 and as such I have not troubled to collect it for general distribution, it being 

 by now so generally grown. I do not very greatly love or admire it. Its inter- 

 est lies in this far northerly extension of its original distribution in the Alps 

 of Yunnan. It abounds at mid-elevations on Thundercrown, not at all avoiding 

 hot dry flanks and exposures, but growing for choice in scant sunny scrub, 

 deep woodland, and along the be-shrubbed brows of cliff or boulder, from 

 which its stiff and starry umbels of bright and golden-eyed magenta pink 

 flaunt or flap with fine effect in May. In the main Min S'an its place is taken 

 by F 197. 



Primula Sp. No. 8 (F 116) is a most gorgeous species of the Nivalis Group. 

 Purdom originally collected it on the foothills of Monk Mountain, and it was 

 shown by Yeitch at the 1913 Conference under the false name of P. "pur- 

 purea," Royle — P. purpurea, Royle, being an invalid synonym for P. nivalis 

 macrophylla. Now F 116 differs absolutely and utterly from every form of 

 P. nivalis in being completely smooth and glossy, and devoid of powder in all 

 parts of its growth. It forms a deep woody stock, sheathed in brown mem- 

 brane, and ending in a few fat white roots ; this supports a cabbage-like tuft 

 of dark green foliage, and an 8- to 12-inch stout stem, carrying a great 

 head of deep violet stars in June, on pedicels so distinct and slender that the 

 cluster is a rayed wheel of blossom, not a piled dome. It grows in the open 

 coarse turf of the Alps, dotted here and there, between 9000 and 13,000 feet, 

 blazing from afar amid the lavender and gold and citron of the other reigning 

 flowers that constellate the grass. Its long stock, and the rough herbage and 

 steep slopes that it affects, indicated that it might prove to possess a typical 

 nivalis-sensitiveness to the least deficiency in drainage or moisture. All turf- 

 Primulas, in fact, should, I think, be treated as such in cultivation, their coarse 



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