PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



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offspring are of every other colour in the range of Primula, but never 

 yellow : until indeed Auricula has bred them back again towards itself 

 again and again, until their blood is practically pure Auricula once 

 more. 



Compared with P. pubescens, the other crosses of P. Auricula are 

 rare, unimportant and obscure. In the Alps of Belluno the var. 

 ciliata meets P. iyrolensis. Two specimens of a mule were once 

 recorded ; their description approximated them to P. Auricula, but 

 no one except Huter ever saw them, nor have they been heard of 

 since. Again, on the high moors of the Engadine Auricula meets 

 iniegrifolia, and P. X Escheri, Briigger, is the result. But P. x 

 Escheri is very rare, nor does it sound very desirable. The intense 

 colour of P. hirsuta is able to grow yet intenser with the conquered 

 gold of P. Auricula ; but the lymphatic lilacs of iniegrifolia and 

 oenensis have to strike a compromise ; and the result is a series of 

 dim, pallid, and washy tones, muddy and indeterminate. P. oenensis 

 is a species near hirsuta, but of pallid colour, and is found only on 

 the Rhaetian extremities of Switzerland, along the Ortler group, and 

 down into the Alps of Giudicaria, above the Lake of Garda. Here 

 it meets P. Auricula, and here, last spring, I came upon the first and 

 only plant I have found, or wish to find, of P. x discolor, Leybold 

 (P. Portae, Huter), for I am glad the name discolor has priority ; the 

 plant is a larger, spoiled oenensis, the colour feeble and dull, with a 

 blurred yellowish throat. Yet at the same time I admit there may 

 be better forms. One is too apt to think that plants of a cross must 

 all be cut rigidly to one pattern, whereas one allows at once that there 

 may be endless diversities of form and colour among the species from 

 which they spring ; all the more reason, therefore, that such diversities 

 should naturally and inevitably continue in the hybrids also. None 

 the less P. oenensis is a species so comparatively dull in its class (it 

 has to compete with hirsuta, villosa, and pedemontana) that I cannot 

 think its offspring would ever have high value, especially when con- 

 taminated by a strong yellow. For the last cross of P. Auricula you 

 have to travel far, far away into a land where they speak a jargon 

 inconceivable by man, in words of twenty syllables made up of X's 

 and Z's. For here, lonely upon its wooded hill-tops in the Idrian 

 ranges, sporadically occurs the rare and glorious Primula carniolica. 

 And here is found a cross between carniolica and Auricula, which is 

 strangely well-known in catalogues (if they speak sooth) as P. X 

 venusta. Last August I ascended Jelenk, venusta's locus classicus, 

 whence it draws the later name of P. Jelenkae, but, though I hunted 

 sedulously, I wholly failed, not only to find the cross, but also to see 

 any trace of P. Auricula itself. P. x venusta, in any case, would be 

 almost impossible to discover out of flower ; it has all the habit of 

 P. carniolica, but its leaves and calyces sometimes inherit more or less 

 of Auricula's white farina. But the fragrant flowers are of a red, 

 reddish, or brownish rose or purple. The plant is fertile of secondary 

 crosses, and, pollinated by P. marginata, has yielded the beautiful 



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