BALFOUR—NEW SPECIES OF PRIMULA. 55 
Omphalogrammas in P. Elwesiana, King, in Sikkim, to whom 
I have shown the specimens, concurs in the view expressed of 
the relationship of P. Viola-grandis, Farrer et Purdom and 
P. Englert, Knuth. 
Farrer and Purdom’s plant has some resemblance to P. 
vincaeflora, Franch. but is altogether less robust, and the long 
petioled leaves separate them at sight. 
Franchet first pointed out the distinctness of these forms 
from Primula, and definitely in 1898 * he constituted the genus 
Omphalogramma for them, having previously in 1885 + been 
content to place them as a section under Primula. Pax in 
1889 { kept up Franchet’s group as a section of Primula, re- 
naming it Barbatae on the trivial ground that, as seed was known 
in only one of the three species recognised at the time, the name 
might not be descriptively accurate of the others. In his 
monograph of 1905 § Pax reverts to Franchet’s name Omphalo- 
gramma, but keeps the group as a section of Primula notwith- 
standing Franchet’s advocacy in his paper of 1898 of its claim 
to generic rank. 
I have had opportunity to examine specimens of all of the 
known species excepting P. Englert, Knuth. The labours of 
Forrest and Ward in China and of Cave and Cooper in Sikkim 
have furnished an ample supply of dried specimens, and through 
Forrest and Cave we have now living plants in the Royal Botanic 
Garden, Edinburgh, of P. Delavayi, Franch., P. Elwesiana, King, 
P. Franchetii, Pax, and P. vincaeflora, Franch. P. Francheti, 
Pax in fruit is still unknown in Europe. The more I examine 
the plants, the more convinced I am that Franchet is right in 
treating Omphalogramma as a genus separate from Primula. 
I do not lay stress upon vegetative features—their general 
characters occur in true Primulas, for instance, in P. Gammieana, 
King, in P. Gambeliana, Watt and others of the so-called Cordi- 
folia section. The flower and seed characters give quite definite 
diagnostic marks of generic value, and these are :— 
(a) The flower is zygomorphous. 
(b) The numerical symmetry of perianth and androecium— 
the whorls have commonly six parts, but may be up to 
eight, and occasionally five. 
(c):The stamens have long stout filaments with the anterior 
ones bending across the corolla tube to complete the 
cone of anthers at the corolla mouth. 
(d) Seeds flat with a broad wing-aril. 
* Franchet in Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr. xlv (1898), 179. 
5 : 
. ¢ Pax in Engl. Jahrb. x (1889), 209. 
: § Pax, Primul in Engler’s Pfianzenr, (1905), I09. 
