APPENDIX. 



nothing of its much more moderate stature of some 5 or 6 inches only. 

 The August-borne blossoms are very large and comfortable faced, and fat and 

 round, of a melting, milky pink with a yellow throat and delicate fragrance. 

 This charmer begins in the moister upmost silt-slopes of Thundercrown (where 

 it has a strange little offshoot or poor cousin, in P. No. 9, 2000 feet lower down 

 the mountain), but its main abundance is in the Min S'an, very high up, at 

 12,000 to 13,000 feet, where it loves the open earth-fans of the steep fell-sides, 

 densely dotting the fine loam and shingle with its solitary crowns, so frail and 

 scant of root ; but thence even spreads by myriads into the finer Alpine turf 

 all round, and sends its seedlings far down into the valleys beneath, where 

 their results occur in little colonies or bright specklings of colour, along the 

 grassy or shingly levels of the beck-bottoms in the gorges and cool glens 

 and shady places, very different from the naked exposure of the high- 

 alpine heights where it is at home in the barer moister slopes and channels 

 of clammy and stony calcareous loam. (Painting and photograph.) (This is 

 P. gemmifera.) 



Primula Sp. No. 14 (F 191) is P. Maximowiczii. This, the big reddish 

 hyacinth-flowered, many-tiered stalwart, has an enormous range over all the 

 grassy Alps of Northern, Central, and Western China. Let it be noted that 

 this must surely be both hardy and soundly perennial (unless where it may 

 flower itself to death), but that it is a typical turf-Primula of nivalis habit, 

 and therefore would be best if grown in grass on a cool, well-watered, and per- 

 fectly-drained slope, kept rigidly dry in winter. Stagnation and clogging damp 

 will be its detestation, especially in the over-rich soil which it would clearly 

 appreciate in summer. I have not yet seen it in flower, but it abounds in the 

 hay of the cooler slopes on the Tibetan Alps, not descending to the flat and 

 sedgy glen bottoms like P. Purdomii. 



Primula Sp. No. 15 (F 178) is a most charming little species of the wood- 

 land group, but quite (I think) distinct. It runs freely about with light, frail 

 runners, in the profound cold moss-banks in the highest Tibetan forest, towards 

 the summit of the ridges, at some 12,000 feet, covering the deep beds of leaf- 

 mould with a carpet of sharp-lobed, bright-green foliage, above which spring 

 dainty little scapes of 4 or 5 inches in July, each usually flourishing, on 

 long, fine pedicels, a pair or more of charming rose-mauve flowers, wide and 

 flat and starry, with a pale eye and darker tube. It has a most especial dainti- 

 ness and charm ; and its divaricate calyx-lobes make its assignation uncertain. 

 A later lot of seed distributed as F 464 is almost certainly F 178 beyond shadow 

 of doubt ; but as it was collected by a Chinese collector I have thought best to 

 avoid the possibility of a confusion. (Painting and photograph.) This has a 

 certain look of P. Jcisoana, but is clearly distinct, if only in the much longer and 

 finer pedicels and better blossoms. (P. alsophila, Sp. nova ; it is symbiotic with 

 a fungus, and has failed.) 



Primula Sp. No. 16 (F 193) is doubtful, and distributed only under a caution. 

 It is a most precious find of Purdom's — a glaucous-grey, erect-leaved, clumping 

 Primula of the Nivalis Group, with the habit of the rest, but blossoms of soft 



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