PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



151 



Himalayas, but in Baluchistan, where P. Lacei, Hemsl. and Watt, 

 dwarf yellow-flowered plant, is an outlier. 



Chinese Species of the Sufjruticosa Section. 



Pink flowers. 

 P. Dubemardiana, G. Forrest 

 P. Henrici, Bur. et Franch. 

 P. Monbeigii, Balf. fiL 



Yellow flowers. 

 P. bracteata, Franch. 

 P. birflata, Franch. 

 P. Forrestii, Balf. fiL (fig. 52) 

 P. pseudobracteata, Petitm. 

 P. rufa, Balf. fil. 



I have now to write about an assemblage of Primulas of which 

 the striking character is drooping flowers. They are distributed by 

 Pax through several of his sections, and in bringing them together 

 here I arrange them in three sections which grade from one to the 

 other — Muscarioides, Soldanelloides, Amethystina. 



Section Muscarioides. 



Recent discoveries of Eastern Primulas have brought to our knowledge 

 no more interesting species than those which we may call, from their 

 flower habit, the Muscarioid section. Of the nine forms of the section 

 no one was in cultivation at the date of the last Primula Conference. 

 The Sikkim P. bellidi folia, King, was the first known species and is 

 the only known Indian species. In Szechwan, Yunnan, and bordering 

 Tibet several species have been discovered and described during the 

 last thirty years, and five of them are now in our gardens, namely — 

 in the order of their introduction : — P. deflexa, Duthie ; P. Girald- 

 iana, Pax ; P. Littoniana, G. Forrest ; P. pinnatifida, Franch. • 

 P. Watsoni, Dunn. The characteristic feature of the group is the 

 aggregation of small flowers, which have tubular corollas with a short 

 erect limb, in a close spike or capitulum, in which they are all inserted 

 with the mouths of the corollas downwards. The flowers being sessile 

 the down curvature takes place in the calyx and corolla, the conse- 

 quence of which is that their posterior side is more developed than is their 

 anterior side ; the calyx in particular has the posterior segments much 

 larger than the anterior ones. In each flower-bud the broad posterior 

 and postero-lateral calycine lobes cover the rest of the flower, and the 

 overlapping of the segments gives the surface of the young spike an 

 imbricate look, as of a tiled roof. The opening of the flowers begins 

 at the bottom of the spike and proceeds upwards, and as expansion 

 proceeds we get the form which is so distinctive in the group, of a 

 cluster of deflexed purplish or bluish narrow flowers surmounted by a 

 cone of a different colour constructed by the unopened flowers, the 

 calyces in which are coloured usually dark purple, or, it may be, as in 

 P. Littoniana, G. Forrest, and P. Viali, Franch., a bright scarlet. The 

 species rival one another in fragrance. 



The first of the group to come into cultivation was P. deflexa, 

 Duthie, the most fragrant of all as yet known, and perhaps also the 



