PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



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11. About 1582 Clusius sant from Vienna to his friend Van der Dilft 

 specimens of P. Auricula and P. pubescens. 



12. Their cultivation spread so rapidly that they appeared in most gardens 

 in Belgium, Germany, England, and Holland by the middle of the seventeenth 

 century; and in the year 1664 several cultivated forms of P. pubescens of 

 different colours were known. They were also tried in Italy but without 

 success. 



13. P. Auricula, not yielding varieties, gradually disappeared from culti- 

 vation, while the other increased them continually until more than a thousand 

 forms were in cultivation. 



14. After Clusius' time the knowledge of the original habitat of 

 P. pubescens gradually faded away. 



15. But between 1774 and 1794, the P. pubescens was again found in 

 Tyrol by Wulfen, not on the Alps near Innsbruck, but in the peasants' 

 gardens at Windisch-Matrei. The peasants, on being interrogated by Wulfen 

 as to its origin, would probably reply that they came from the neighbouring 

 mountains. Wulfen, however, never saw any wild specimens, but sent 

 specimens of the cultivated plant to Jacquin at Vienna, who gave it its 

 present name. 



16. Since then, although the Iselthal Mountains from Windisch-Matrie to 

 Pregraten, and all the neighbouring Alps, have been by later botanists most 

 diligently searched, no wild specimen has ever been found. 



17. Not only in the gardens near to Windisch-Matrei however, was it 

 grown, but also in many of the valleys of the Pasterthal, and also in North 

 Tyrol in the Innthal. 



18. In the year 1867, however, Kerner, who was accustomed to spend his 

 summer holidays in the Gschnitzthal, discovered the P. pubescens (super- 

 auricula X hirsuta, AD.) growing with its two parents, and another hybrid 

 (subauricula x hirsuta, All.), P. arctotis, in the upper end of the valley in the 

 neighbourhood of the Tribulauc, a dolomite peak. 



19. Kerner adds that, as far as he knows, the Auricula (through P. 

 pubescens) is the only Alpine plant that has become a generally cultivated 

 florists' flower. 



I think that to many minds the above paragraphs will be convincing 

 as to the origin of the Auricula. I have seen in herbaria specimens of 

 P. pubescens (wild of course) with much more of meal and of dark maroon 

 colour than appeared in any living specimen produced at the exhibition. 



But there are two other points that Mr. Hibberd did not call attention to, 

 and these were, 1st, the occasional great size and variation in form of the 

 bract ; and, 2ndly, the deep and narrow denticulation of the leaf of some of 

 the Auricula forms. I think he might well have asked how those two points 

 could have been evolved from P. pubescens. But if he would deign once more 

 to cast a glance at wild specimens of the despised P. Palinuri, he will find that 

 it possesses by far the largest bract of any European Primula, and that its 

 denticulation is deep and close, more so than that of P. Auricula, and in 

 exact correspondence with the leaves of some of the forms of the florists' plant. 

 In addition it will supply a golden-yellow for the flower, and abundance of 

 meal, if it be thought that P. Auricula be too pale and too bare of meal 

 to supply enough to P. pubescens. This conjecture, indeed, has already been 

 made by Stein in his List of Primulas, 1882. I think it very plausible. 



It is possible that another hybrid still may have assisted in the formation 



