TRANSACTIONS 



BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 



SESSION LXXIX. 



Primula obcoxica and its Microforms. By 

 Professor Bayley Balfour, F.R.S. (Plates XXI-LYI.) 



(Read 10th April 1913.) 



The plant we know as Primula obconica, Hance, was 

 described from specimens collected about Ichang in West 

 Hupeh, in 1879, by Consul T. Watters. It was gathered in 

 the same year in the gorge formed by the Yangtze at 

 Ichang by Charles Maries, collector for Messrs. Veitch & 

 Sons of Chelsea. There is no previous record of the plant. 

 Raised at Chelsea by Messrs. Veitch from seed sent by 

 Maries, it flowered in September 1880, and the plant was 

 awarded a first-class certificate by the Royal Horticul- 

 tural Society in 1882. A figure of it under the name 

 P. poculiformis, Hook, f., appeared in the Botanical 

 Magazine of September 1881 — a name which has had 

 to yield to the earlier one given by Hance. 1 



Its popularity as a garden plant has been affected 

 adversely by the property it possesses of causing trouble- 

 some irritation of the skin to some of those who handle 

 it. The property is not confined to P. obconica, Hance, 

 amongst primulas. P. sinensis, Lindl., and P. Sieboblii, 

 E. Morren, possess it also, but in a degree so much less as 

 to give little occasion for remark amongst cultivators : and 

 it has been observed in some other species. 



1 Hance in Journ. of Bot., xviii (1879), 23 i. 



TRAXS. BOT. SOC. EDIX. VOL. XXVI. 22 



