APPENDIX. 



yellow. Only seven specimens of this were originally seen in 1911, on one high 

 grassy crest of Tibet, in company with P. Maximowiczii and P. Purdomii. 

 On Purdom's return to the station in 1914 the flower was over, and the two 

 solitary plants discoverable in seed could not therefore be positively guaranteed 

 to be this new yellow Nivalis, though the probabilities in their favour are so 

 large as almost to amount to certainty. (Seed of the next number yielded 

 chiefly this.) 



Primula Sp. No. 17 (F 192) is the unsurpassable and worthily named P. 

 Purdomii. This Queen of the Nivalis Group belongs to the high grasslands of 

 the Tibetan Alps opposite J6-ni. Though I have not been dazzled yet by 

 the spectacle of its bloom, I have been interested to watch its habit (they say 

 it flowers best in alternate years), and to note that, while it is a typical turf- 

 species of the Nivalis cousinhood, like PP. Maximowiczii, P. No. 16, P. No. 8, 

 yet it has idiosyncrasies not shared by the others. It is perceptibly more local, 

 and, though it may often freely be found in the folds and slopes of the vast 

 upper hayfields, it has a clear liking for more level (that is to say, more moisture- 

 retaining) tracts, such as small flat stretches along the descending ridges, and 

 especially for the sedgy cool flats in the upper stretches of the valleys, beside 

 the cold and brawling ice-green becks of the Min S'an. No hay or rushy turf 

 can be too coarse and dense for it, it seems ; its need is evidently the even 

 distribution of damp by the grass roots in summer, and then, in winter, a thatch 

 of yet more special depth and dryness under the dry snow than that required 

 by all the others. It is a noble and robust grower, very different from the 

 small (yet how beautiful !) specimens shown at the Conference. I have seen 

 the seed-scapes at least 2 feet high, with some 30 stalwart erect pods. It 

 was first collected by Purdom in 1911, and exhibited at the Conference 

 of 1913. 



Primula Sp. No. 18 (F 194) is P. tangutica, one of the few really frightful 

 Primulas — so ugly that only under protest have I sent any seed at all, though 

 it abounds with P. No. 13 in the highest earth-fans of the Tibetan Alps, in habit 

 like a small untidy P. Maximowiczii, with Maximowiczii's larger redder flowers 

 reduced to wispy starved little ragged stars of dull chocolate and brownish 

 black. 



Primula Sp. No. 19 (F 195) requires very careful watching, as this number 

 contains certainly two distinct species, and possibly four. The number stands 

 primarily for P. stenocalyx, which I think is undilutedly genuine in the earliest 

 lot of seed sent under the name (and already germinated) — a most beautiful 

 species of the Auriculate Group, with lush flat rosettes of glabrous foliage, in 

 the vertical cliffs and shingle-walls of the lower Tibetan region about J6-ni, 

 and short scapes of an inch or two, generously furnished with large and de- 

 liciously fragrant flowers of rosy-lavender. It was first collected by Purdom 

 in 1911, but has never yet been shown. Unfortunately, we were too late in the 

 Min S'an for its flowering season, and as our reports had a certain ambiguity 

 as to the difference between " form " and " species," it was only too tardily 

 that I discovered that at least one supposed " form," from the Lotus Mountain, 



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