APPENDIX. 



by P. No. 10 it should be a glorious Nivalis of lavender-purple, and, to judge 

 by captured crowns now emerging from their biscuit-tins in Lanchow, it sends 

 them up (after the loaves are well-developed) with profusion, and grows with 

 imperturbable vigour and copiousness of clump. Seed was barely mature, and 

 may prove unsatisfactory ; but I hope that dormant plants may also arrive 

 and in good condition. This has thriven much better than P. optata. 



Primula Sp. No. 23 (F 273) has especial value, as being our only representa- 

 tive of the spiked Giraldiana Group. It is a most delightful find of Purdom's, 

 rarely occurring on mossy slopes of a river-ghyll high on Lotus Mountain, 

 with pine-trees well up above it on either side. I have only seen it in dry 

 and seeding specimens ; it appears to me perfectly glabrous, a wonderful and 

 unique promise of prosperity in a Muscarioid Primula ; its white-powdered 

 stems, in capsule, are a foot or more in height, and it bears lovely little bells 

 of lavender-blue, with the intoxicating fragrance of its group. (P. aerinantha, 

 Sp. vova.) 



Primula Sp. No. 24 (F 300) was, in point of fact, the first of all our Primulas 

 to be found. It was already out of flower when we descended from the Feng 

 S'an Ling upon Wen Hsien on 28th April, and Purdom had the happy idea to 

 diverge up to the foot of a high-swaying little Staubbach of a water-spray that 

 shot down over a great westerly-facing cliff to the left ; and there, all up the 

 ledges, found this Primula growing in great wads and masses of the neatest 

 little mealed rosettes, from all of which shot sturdy scapes of an inch or two, 

 carrying such sturdy pedicels and calyces as to give good hope that the flowers 

 will be sturdy and large to match. The umbel seems to carry 4 to 6 blooms 

 in a wide head ; as yet I cannot assign this almost unexamined but most dis- 

 tinct species to any particular group, unless it be that of P. Sertulum. The 

 buds on collected plants here have unfortunately gone " blind," but I hope seed 

 will prosper, and a cool rather damp cliff-crevice ultimately reveal the species 

 in the beauty I feel safe in foretelling from its neat massed habit and doughty 

 little scape. (No seed germinated.) 



Primula Sp. No. 25 (F 192) is almost certainly P. septemloba. I found it, 

 in the very end of all things, on a cool loose-soiled bank at a cliff's foot, high 

 up in the Alps of Satanee, with scant willows growing about. Everything of 

 it was gone to mush, except the sere stiff scapes of 8 inches ; but the very 

 numerous crowded erect pedicels of these suggested obviously the drooping 

 flowers of P. septemloba, and amid the decayed leaves could be discerned the 

 relics of acute lobing, such as you get in P. septemloba and P. No. 15, but not 

 in the more gently-rounded divisions of the Polyneura Group. The plant, 

 however, had bad luck ; the collecting-box was not prompt enough in recognising 

 its specific claims, and its large root-masses got mixed up with the frail cr6wns 

 of P. No. 5, while the 7 seeds which alone the exhausted capsules yielded were 

 so carefully put away as never to be found again. It will no doubt turn up 

 among the sendings of P. No. 5, but is in itself a much less important species, 

 already known, and not pre-eminent, as it is closely rivalled by Cortusa MaUhiolii, 

 as delicate a thing and an older friend. 



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