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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



large bunches of crimson flowers, growing a foot high, is very- 

 hardy, liking good loam and a sheltered, rather shady position. 

 Its chief merit is its perfect habit of growth. It spreads by 

 underground horizontal shoots or stolons, not more than an 

 inch or two long, at the end of which a tuft of leaves and roots 

 come. The stolon dies before winter, leaving a minute rooted 

 bud ; so that a clump of this Primrose is really composed of a 

 large number of independent plants, each at a convenient distance 

 from its neighbour. The moderate length of the roots makes it 

 easy to divide and transplant with a trowel, even when in flower. 

 In the whole range of hardy herbaceous gardening I know no 

 plant with a more accommodating habit. Primula japonica is 

 a fine ornamental species ; with me it increases abundantly by 

 self-sown seed. It is usually a short-lived plant, because left to 

 itself it exhausts the soil beneath it, but by dividing and trans- 

 planting it may be perpetuated ; it may even be cut through the 

 crown early in autumn, and latent buds at the sides of the plant 

 are developed. It likes rich cultivation. 



We now come to Himalayan kinds, of which I have grown 

 from seed to flowering fifteen species or more, most of them, I 

 regret to say, worthless for garden ornament. Some of them 

 are not hardy. P. Beidii, perhaps the most elegant and beau- 

 tiful of the genus, flowers and dies without ripening seed. 

 P. prolifera (syn. imperialis) flowers with a shabby and un- 

 comfortable look, as if it did not like the climate ; it lacks the 

 constitution of its near ally, P. japonica. Several other species 

 are too insignificant to be ornamental in gardens. P. obtusifolia 

 seems one of the best, being very distinct in colour and of robust 

 habit. It may prove the parent of important crosses, but at 

 present none of these Indian species give much promise of 

 potential development. P. Stuartii, and its variety P. purpurea 

 of Royle, have not come up to expectations. The type takes at 

 least two years to reach flowering ; it has very coarse leaves and 

 an umbel of yellow flowers, small in proportion to the plant, 

 and hardly compensating for the long delay of production. After 

 flowering the thick rootstock often rots away. A second flower- 

 ing is sometimes produced in autumn, but a plant seldom lives 

 for more than two flowerings. The variety P. purpurea I have 

 several times raised from imported seed ; its development is 

 slow, and the bunch of flowers generally small, though the colour 



