Il6 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



P. X ' Marven' so close in habit and style to the purple pubescens called 

 decora. All these hybrids, of course, have the splendid constitution 

 of P. Auricula. 



But the most wholesale parent in the race (a seed-parent usually, 

 while Auricula gives seed as freely as it takes it) far exceeding Auricula 

 in promiscuity, though not in the general horticultural importance of 

 its children, is Primula minima. P. minima is not a Swiss plant, nor 

 at all a species of the Western, Southern, or Central Alps. The Brenner 

 range marks its furthest westerly extension, and the Alps round the 

 Adamello and the Pal a group the extremity of its distribution into 

 S. Tyrol and Giudicaria. But thence it ranges eastward, over lime 

 and granite indifferently, in enormous abundance over all the high 

 turf of Tyrol, Salzburg, and the Styrian limestones, far away into 

 Thrace, Servia, and Bulgaria. Thus, in the Hohe Tauern, minima 

 meets villosa ; on the Styrian Alps S. of Vienna, Clusiana ; on the 

 granites of the Brenner, hirsuta ; on the limestone of the Pala Dolo- 

 mites, tyrolensis ; to the East, again, in the Karawanken, Wuljeniana ; 

 and at its most southerly and westerly point, on the Alps of the Frate 

 di Breguzzo in Giudicaria, under the Adamello. it just contrives to 

 catch an outpost of spectabilis and oenensis. And everywhere through- 

 out the Austrian Alps, as far south as the Rolle Pass, it shares whole 

 miles of granitic moorland with glutinosa. 



All the hybrids of P. minima are of the utmost use and interest. 

 It is among them that my experience has so far mostly lain. It was 

 in 1911 that my attention was first challenged by them, and in August 

 though the flowers were long since over, I was able to discover inter- 

 media, Juribella, Kellereri, Forsteri, besides the whole series, in brilliant 

 bloom, of the minima x glutinosa range from salisburgensis to bi flora. 

 So easy are the crosses for a fairly well-trained eye to hit upon ; many 

 may be the different breadths and shapes of leaf among types of the 

 species, but the look of an intermediate is never to be mistaken — no, 

 not even amid the colossal-foliaged minimas of the Brenner group, 

 where I toiled for hours over the slopes before suddenly in an instant 

 I saw the rosettes of Kellereri and Forsteri growing side by side beneath 

 my eye. There need be no strain or d/cpi/? eta about the search ; 

 doubt may often cross the searcher's mind while he is yet hunting the 

 hybrid ; never when once he sets eyes on it. 



It will be noticed that minima, almost universal in its alliances 

 (it spurns Auricula, but I have little doubt that Illyria will yield a cross 

 between minima and Kitaibeliana) , has the further luck of sharing 

 ground with three out of the four magnificent Arthritic Primulas, 

 perhaps the most gorgeous and valuable in the whole race. One 

 would expect a splendid result in dwarf, huge-flowered, mat- 

 forming, profusely-growing Primulas. Unfortunately, except in one 

 case, these anticipations are not realized. While the best forms of 

 minima have beautiful round blossoms of ample outline and sound 

 texture, there are vast multitudes with feeble, thin and starry shape, 

 thin and feeble also in their texture. And these it is that have mostly 



