APPENDIX. 



prove an easy door in loamy well-watered moraine, and never shares its home 

 with other vegetation nor descends to less gaunt and barren places. It has 

 so close a relationship to P. No. 22 from similar heights and situations in the 

 main Min S'an, that I dare not yet quite propose it as a separate species, or 

 more than a local development on its isolated mountain mass. In P 22, how- 

 ever, the foliage is taller, more advanced with the flower, more upstanding, 

 revolute, dark, leathery, opaque, and stiff, with more powder in its young 

 stage, and a clear white line of powder round the under margin of the mature 

 leaf, such as is very rare indeed on the much more explanate, glossy, succulent, 

 bright-green foliage of P. No. 10. (Painting and photograph.) (P. optata, 

 Sp. nova: as yet slow and reluctant.) 



Primula Sp. No. 11 (F 133) was suspected to be P. flava. This gracious 

 and glorious canary-yellow-headed beauty, lush and sub-tropical-looking in thin 

 and powdered foliage, has been figured in the Chronicle beyond need of more 

 description. It looks as if it had a sturdy constitution, yet in nature is most 

 rigidly restricted to the dry and powdery limy silt on the floors of overhung (and, 

 for preference, sunless) grottoes and crevices of the limestone cliffs at 9000 to 

 10,000 feet, from Thundercrown away up all the Border ranges, ascending to 

 14,000 or 15,000 feet in open crevices and crannies, where, however, it still 

 markedly prefers the cold and overhung aspects, and is anyhow always wizen 

 and compact by comparison with its luxuriant development in more com- 

 fortable cavities lower down. Here, and here only, untouched by sun or rain, 

 it grows superb and lax as in the photograph, seeding copiously over the fine 

 silty surfaces, cool and powdery, of the dusty grotto-beds. It is P. citrina, 

 of which I believe P. flava to be only a xeromorph. It lives, but does not 

 thrive. 



Primula Sp. No. 12 (F 187) is P. conspersa. It was collected first by Purdom 

 in 1911, and has been commented on in the Chronicle. It is not found at all 

 until you reach the Minchow district, and ranges westwards, thence into the 

 foothills of the Min S'an, not mounting or descending from some 8500 feet, 

 where it occupies precisely the situations beloved by P. farinosa, on the damper 

 grassy hillsides and in the small, marish folds of the fells, and in level damp 

 places beside the mountain streams ; precisely copying P. farinosa too in 

 its whole effect, except that the scapes are usually 9 to 12 inches high, 

 and carry 2 or 3 superimposed tiers of blossom. (So that, in sum, it is 

 exactly like a much taller, several-tiered P. farinosa.) In the Tibetan Alps it 

 blooms from early July ; it is not absolutely a biennial, for specially stout 

 crowns can be found preparing next year's leaf-bud at the base of the seedling 

 stems ; but by far the larger majority of seeding plants die in the act, and it 

 is as a biennial that P. conspersa had better be grown in England, wherever 

 P. farinosa is happy, with a yearly sowing of seed broadcast over fine moist 

 turfy tracts. (Painting and photograph.) 



Primula Sp. No. 13 (F 1G8) is a particularly beautiful species, very closely 

 allied to P. sibirica, but differing absolutely, I think, in having its daisylike 

 foliage always dentate, and its scapes and pedicels always powdered — to say 



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