Primulas 



garden can commonly afford, so they are not broadly 

 planted, and only to be found in a few nooks of the rock 

 garden, where the white and lavender forms of Sieboldii 

 are very welcome to spread if they will do it on their own 

 responsibility. 



P. Veitchii I have tried to like, and failed to do more 

 than tolerate. A white form I could love, but the type 

 is so defiantly aniline in its choice of red that I should 

 neither cry nor purchase a successor should it die of my 

 cold neglect. On the contrary the smaller-flowered, equally 

 aniline, Cortusa Matthioli has a firm hold on my affections, 

 perhaps grounded in the memories of pleasant mornings 

 in the cool gully, where among fallen boulders and a 

 dwarf forest of Alnus viridis I first saw its downy leaves 

 and crimson buds planted by Nature's own hand. It is a 

 strange place, that gully, part of the only woodland for 

 miles around, on the shady side of the Mt. Cenis lake. 

 You must mount up to the col and cross into France and 

 begin to descend before you find another thicket of the 

 Alder, but there you will find no Cortusa, for on the Cenis 

 it is wholly confined to this gully. There it is very abun- 

 dant under the straggling stems of the Alder, growing in 

 rich leaf soil, or tufts of moss, or apparently nothing but 

 rock and atmosphere, but always, always in shade. Snow 

 lies late in this hollow, and must be very deep in winter, 

 for the Alders are flattened under it as though a steam 

 roller had been over them, and what looks from below 

 like a slope of dwarf bushes is the most difficult thing to 

 climb among I can imagine ; the long, prostrate stems give 

 under your feet, catch round your ankles, and whip your 

 legs, and the upright portions are no good to catch hold of 

 145 K 



