PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



123 



gardens (whether rightly or wrongly) P. X Dinyana and P. X Muretiana 

 — Dinyana being the pre-valent name, unless possibly Muretiana 

 be allowed to stand for the reverse cross. These are very handsome 

 plants, having something of viscosa's stature, many-flowered umbels, 

 and imperial colouring, with integrifolia's great wide flowers to correct 

 viscosa's rather narrow trumpets, even as viscosa's violet corrects the 

 much feebler lilac of P. integrifolia. Of these, in situ, I can say 

 nothing from personal experience, having only once visited the Enga- 

 dine in early autumn, on which occasion, in the moss-cushion of a 

 waterfall I collected a Primula (out of flower) which it was absurd 

 to think could have sprung from drought-loving viscosa. Viscosa X 

 hirsuta again (P. x Berninae, Kerner) is a brilliant and robust cross 

 which I have not collected, but which is not uncommon where the 

 parents abound, as in the Engadine, and down into the Bergamask 

 Alps. Viscosa x oenensis (P. X Kolbiana, Widmer) belongs also to 

 these southerly parts, but rests on a unique specimen imperfectly 

 described and therefore best ignored. There is no chance, I think, 

 of viscosa x apennina, or viscosa x villosa, as the species do not 

 meet ; viscosa x cottia, however, should certainly occur, though I 

 have not yet discovered it. 



Crosses in the same sub-section are, as I have said, so rare as to 

 be either negligible or deserving of the most rigid and suspicious 

 scrutiny (e.g. glaucescens X spectabilis, hirsuta x oenensis). There- 

 fore I dare not commit myself as yet to anything even approaching 

 a conjecture about a certain wide-flowered, blue-purple Primula, 

 with definitely dentate foliage (the cynoglossifolia form of viscosa 

 here prevailing, has usually entire leaves), which I found occurring 

 with colonies of P. viscosa, by stream beds on the Mont Cenis, which 

 certainly, if one could be more sure, or study it at home (but collected 

 fragments of its woody trunks have not yet thriven with me), suggests, 

 as far as its colouring and outline go, the influence of P. marginata. 

 However, in all but those two points the plant was typically P. viscosa. 

 The Mont Cenis, however, affords me my one original (as I believe) 

 contribution up to date to the roll-call of Natural Primula Crosses, 

 for P. viscosa shares the lesser Mont Cenis with P. pedemontana, and 

 here, accordingly, even as viscosa interbreeds with hirsuta in the 

 Engadine, so here it has interbred also with hirsuta' 's subsection brother. 

 The result is a Primula which I dignify by the name of the Scientific 

 Committee's Chairman, Mr. E. A. Bowles, who assisted, with cries 

 of joy, at its discovery. *Primula x Bowlesii is a counterpart, as 

 might be imagined, of P. x Berninae (viscosa x hirsuta). It is nearer 

 to viscosa, which is obviously its seed-parent, but has inherited from 

 P. pedemontana a scantier coating of russet fur round the edge of its 

 leaves, and an ampler form for the flowers, which are of a much 

 warmer colouring than in P. viscosa, though viscosa, as well as its 

 stature and design of umbel, has contributed a blurred purplish throat 

 which mars the clear white eye that it should inherit from pedemontana. 



* See p. 227. 



