PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



and where it overlaps with the rest, that thus you may gather a clear 

 notion of where hybrids (the word is incorrect of crosses within the 

 same race, but is now of such general currency that one can hardly 

 avoid the occasional use of it) may be looked for and expected. And 

 here I may mention one or two guiding rules that seem to hold good. 

 The first appears to be that, in Primula, crosses between species of 

 different sections (not subsections) are of occurrence so rare and 

 problematical that most quotations of them may almost be regarded 

 as mythical. For instance, P. longifiora and P. farinosa will not 

 interbreed with any of the twenty-one species belonging to the great 

 section Auricula {longifiora x officinalis has been quoted, but is 

 doubtful). Again, crosses between species in the same subsection are 

 extremely rare, though this rarity, no doubt, is only owing to every 

 Primula's dislike to sharing its district with any relative of the same 

 subsection ; for where at last, very occasionally, such invasion is 

 tolerated, and hirsuta overlaps upon oenensis, glaucescens on spectabilis 

 — there at once, though rarely recorded, may occur the first-cousin- 

 born crosses, P. X Seriana and P. x Carueli. Crosses in the sub- 

 sections of the section Auricula are, as we shall see, abundant, but 

 in the section Farinosa, which has no subsections, farinosa and 

 longifiora apparently decline to interbreed ; for, though a cross has 

 been cited, the occurrence is so uncertain and unique that the plant 

 described (P. X Kraettliana, Briigger) is best taken as a form of 

 longifiora. 



The two most prolific parents in the section Auricula are un- 

 doubtedly minima and Auricula itself, as having the widest range. 

 That range must therefore now be considered. P. Auricula is practi- 

 cally universal throughout the whole Alpine chain, Upper and Lower 

 Austria, and far away to the East ; by strong preference a plant of 

 the limestone Alps, and varying infinitely in its forms, from huge 

 P. Auricula Bauhmi to brilliant little golden P. Auricula ciliata of the 

 Dolomites and southern limestones. In the Graian, Cottian, and Mari- 

 time ranges I believe it to be less common (it does not, for instance, 

 meet P. pedemontana) ; anyhow in your mental map of Europe you 

 may colour all the chains with the citron-yellow of P. Auricula. Its 

 affinities are almost wholly with the Erythrodosum subsection, 

 headed by P. hirsuta, for though it incessantly overlaps all four of the 

 Arthritic Primulas, glaucescens, Wuljeniana, Clusiana, and spectabilis, 

 nowhere does any cross result, although Gusmus (who seems to attri- 

 bute the wildest hybrid origin to any plant that catches his attention, 

 and has crammed the columns of Pax and Knuth with nomina nuda 

 and nomina mcerta) has tried to claim P. x admonlensis, Gusmus, as 

 a cross between Auricula and Clusiana, the said plant possessing, 

 according to Pax, not a single characteristic of Auricula, nor a 

 single deviation from Clusiana. Stein and Kerner have also cited 

 an Auricula ciliata x spectabilis — a plant barely described and never 

 again beheld. With minima again, and marginata, Auricula seems 

 barren, for, in spite of countless opportunities, no offspring results. 



VOL. XXXIX, i 



