PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



I 49 



areas and the neighbourhood of dwellings — rice-fields, pagodas, 

 temples — and our acquaintance with the variations of plants in like 

 places in our own country may prepare us for the multiplicity of forms 

 within specific range which we observe in the Chinese plants. The 

 facies of the plants is that of mealy herbs with rosettes or tufts 

 of petiolate leaves, the lamina elliptic or rounded, more or less heart- 

 shaped at base, and crenately lobed or incised at the margin. In 

 smaller forms one scape, in larger many scapes, come from the tuft 

 and each produces one umbel or a series of whorls of flowers, of which 

 the cup-shaped calyx has divergent sharp lobes. 



P. malacoides, Franch., the finest species in the section, we owe in 

 cultivation to Bees, Ltd., who introduced it in 1908, raised from seed 

 collected by Forrest. As a greenhouse plant it has established itself. 

 The critical student of plant-form will find two forms of the plant — 

 one more robust, with larger leaves, stouter scapes and pedicels, freely 

 seeding, and another in every way a more delicate plant, which does 

 not readily seed unless cross-pollinated. The former plant is the true 

 P. malacoides, Franch. ; the other has been named for garden purposes 

 P, pseudo-malacoides, L. B. Stewart. 



The species of the section that has been longest known in our 

 gardens is the delightful P. Forbesii, Franch., which as we have it at 

 present is a greenhouse perennial of easy cultivation. But the form 

 first introduced under the name was truly monocarpic. P. Forbesii, 

 Franch., is recorded from Burma, but I am not satisfied that the 

 naming is correct. 



These are the only species of the section in cultivation. 



I am disposed to think that they are the only two specific types 

 of the section, but others have been named. Some of these are cer- 

 tainly growth-forms which can be correlated with a modified environ- 

 ment. P. androsacea, Pax, is a very mealy form with compact 

 rosettes, and often bears a profusion of short scapes, each with one 

 umbel. It is a plant of drier sites in the rice-fields. P. multicaulis, 

 Petitm., seems to be P. androsacea, Pax, only less mealy. P. Will- 

 mottiae, Petitm., is a plant of damp places, has a rosette of large 

 membranous leaves, and develops tall, stout scapes, bearing flowers 

 darker coloured than in the type. P. delicata, Petitm., is an annual 

 growing near buildings at some elevation, and has thin leaves and 

 delicate scapes. P. Duclouxii, Petitm., is a dwarf, growing on 

 mountains amongst stones near water, and its scapes are quite short, 

 often shorter than the leaves. P. pellucida, Franch., is a small 

 annual of moist grottos in the limestone, producing translucent leaves 

 and short scapes with few flowers. P. speluncicola, Petitm., and 

 P. debilis, Bonati, are only P. pellucida, Franch. P. Barbeyana, 

 Petitm., described as a species of this alliance, is at the most, if I 

 may judge from the description of it, a microform like those I have 

 mentioned. No one of these forms has horticultural interest, excepting, 

 perhaps, P. androsacea, Pax, which is a brighter plant than P. Forbesii, 

 Franch. 



