CHANGES WHICH TAKE PLACE IN PLANTS 281 



No one who has seen these two plants growing could 

 ever say they were, to an ordinary observer, even very 

 like ; yet there is, according to scientists, very little 

 difference botanically between them. Primula scotica is 

 like a small auricula, with abundance of white farina 

 under the foliage, and a flower of pink or purplish colour; 

 in height not above two inches, or less. Sometimes the 

 flowers of P. scotica are sessile, reclining on the foliage 

 without fast hold ; this is never the case in P. farinosa. 

 The flowers of P. scotica are never white, but in P. farinosa 

 specimens with white flowers were gathered near the Caldron 

 Snout, Cronkley Fell, Teesdale. These two plants are 

 instanced to demonstrate that although nearly related 

 botanically, they both maintain a distinct external appearance 

 at least ; and in this respect differ, like the Connemara 

 heath, entirely in outward appearance. 



Aquilegia Stuarti (named by the late Professor Balfour) is a 

 cross between Aquilegia glandulosa and A. Witmanni. The 

 latter is said to be a cross between A. vulgaris and A. olympica 

 Boiss. Aquilegia Stuarti flowers three weeks before any other 

 Columbine, hence plants raised from seed come always true. 

 For twenty years, treating this plant as a hybrid, I have 

 never failed in raising plenty of plants, which in flowering 

 have never shown any tendency to revert to either parent. 

 Strange to relate, within the last few years, this Columbine 

 has failed to flower as freely as formerly. Last year, 

 however, I never saw it fiaer, the individual flowers being 

 four inches across, and very high coloured. Can any cause 

 be assigned why the flowering of this plant is not so 

 certain as formerly? The true form of A. glandulosa I 

 have grown from Gregor of Forres for fifty years. 



A Siberian species had the same bad habit of failing to 

 flower, and, when I first worked with the plant, I considered 

 it a great triumph to force it to flower by lifting the plants 

 from the open and planting them in pots, and placing them 

 in a small greenhouse, where the blooms came so refined 

 and elegant that they were the admiration of everyone. 

 I have great doubts that Mr Gregor of Forres' strain of 

 Aq. glandulosa is now in existence, as it has been crossed 

 and worked with by many florist^. The last plants pf the 



