PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



121 



anywhere, may be hope of finding their crosses. All these, in the garden 

 are not only of the most gratifying heartiness, but are also — and 

 especially P. Keller eri — of an even greater generosity in the way of 

 flower than they are on their own native hills. 



The last minima cross is one of enormous variety and complexity. 

 Primula glutinosa, the fragrant violet glory of all the eastern granites, 

 begins to the far west of minima, just on the easternmost fringe of 

 Switzerland, in the Alps of the Bernina. And thence, invariably on 

 igneous rock alone, it ranges in magnificent profusion over the highest 

 moors of all the Alpine chains away towards Klagenfurt in the east, 

 and as far south as the volcanic outbreaks beside the Pala Dolomites. 

 On the Brenner begins P. minima ; here the two meet, and thence- 

 forward occupy together all the districts ranged by P. glutinosa. 

 The result is a series of fertile hybrids [minima x glutinosa, and 

 glutinosa x minima) that absolutely baffles nomenclature, the forms 

 fluctuating endlessly between either parent, and re-breeding, and 

 interbreeding, and cross-breeding until only the minutest botanical 

 differences separate them at the end from their parents or each other. 

 Four great classical names are however given : P. xHuteri, P. xbiflora, 

 P. x Floerkeana, P. x salisburgensis. These are very useful words, but 

 quite without weight unless taken rightly as rough-and-ready means 

 to express an inexpressible formula. The most important is the best 

 form of a group that one may memorize as P. X Floerkeana, a splendid 

 plant (glutinosa = minima, precisely intermediate, as I should say); 

 with glutinosa's growth, minima's dense clustered habit, glutinosa's 

 3-inch scape, and three or four minima-sized flowers of a flaring vinous 

 rose that is visible from a quarter of a mile away, amid the rolling 

 blue films across the moorland of P. glutinosa, and the shimmering 

 pink satin sheets of P. minima. P. x Huteri is rare, glutinosa < minima 

 (or minima < glutinosa ?) dwarf, two-blossomed and purple. Then comes 

 P. x biflora, simply an enormous, twy-flowered minima (minima > 

 glutinosa) an infrequent but a splendid development ; then, last of the 

 four stereotyped crosses and best known in cultivation, the large 

 name of P. X salisburgensis. This is glutinosa > minima beyond a doubt; 

 and usually very distinct — a dwarfer glutinosa, triflorous as a rule, 

 with blossoms of a much redder violet than its mother, and narrower 

 in outline than those of its pollen-parent. P. salisburgensis is in habit 

 intermediate, compromising, with a laxly ramifying colony, between 

 the single-clump growth of glutinosa and the spreading dense carpet 

 of minima. Another thing that appears in my experience is the 

 specially paludose proclivity of P. x salisburgensis. It is not that I have 

 only seen it in the time of melting snow, for my first acquaintance 

 with it was made in early August ; but, while P. glutinosa is not by 

 any means a wet ground plant, and P. minima is very definitely a 

 dry-ground one (on the Alps), P. X salisburgensis I have always found, 

 myself, growing in or close to little runnels of water, or in shallow 

 pans of soil with continual percolation of water. The other three 

 named forms^ seem happy under the ordinary conditions of their 



