162 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



red-flowered species. In P. tangutica, Duthie, the flowers are said 

 to vary from yellow to chocolate or almost black. It was raised by 

 Messrs. Veitch from Wilson's seeds in 1905, and these plants had dark 

 flowers, and again from Purdom's seed. Regarding the name, I may 

 explain : the plant appears in Pax's Monograph, published in Novem- 

 ber 1905 as P. tangutica, Pax ; in the Gardeners 1 Chronicle of July 1905 

 Duthie described it under the same name. Duthie as the authority 

 has priority over Pax. As matter of fact, both botanists took the 

 name from the ticket attached by Maximowicz to herbarium specimens 

 collected by Potanin in 1885. Maximowicz named the plant as var. 

 tangutica, Maxim., of P. Maximowiczii, Regel. This varietal name 

 was never published. A third species is the yellow-flowered P. 

 szechuanica, Pax — said to be also in cultivation raised by Messrs. 

 Veitch from Purdom's seed. 



Chinese Species of the Maximowiczii Section. 

 Purple flowers. Yellow flowers. 



P. Maximowiczii, Regel (fig. 51) P. szechuanica, Pax 

 Yellow and purple flowers. 

 P. tangutica, Duthie 



I now write of a set of Primulas which differ from all others in pos- 

 sessing large — a couple of inches across — solitary ebracteate flowers on 

 scapes rising from a sheath of later developing leaves, a calyx cut to 

 the base into five to eight segments, and fiat seeds with a wide wing 

 aril. Franchet, who had exceptionally good material for study of 

 the plants, grouped them in a section of Primula, naming it Omphalo- 

 gramma. Later he made the section a genus distinct from Primula. 

 Pax reduces the genus to a section again. I follow him here, and 

 until examination of living flowering and fruiting specimens justifies 

 judgment. 



Section Omphalogramma. 



The section Omphalogramma includes five species which in their 

 distribution show the relationships between the Himalayan and 

 Chinese flora upon which I have commented in speaking of other 

 sections. One species, P. Elwesiana, King, is a Sikkim plant, the other 

 four are Chinese — P. Delavayi, Franch., on the Tali range of mountains, 

 is the southernmost species ; P. vincaeflora, Franch., occurs further 

 north on the Lichiang range ; and P. Franchetii, Pax, the most northern 

 species and apparently the rarest, grows on the Mekong-Salween Divide 

 about Yarkalo and Tseku. P. Engleri, R. Knuth, if it is different 

 from P. Franchetii, Pax, which I greatly doubt — at least there is no 

 character in Knuth's description of it that does not apply equally well 

 to P. Franchetii, Pax — would carry the northern distribution of the 

 section eastwards to Tatsienlu. The plants have quite the facies of 

 the Himalayan monotypic genus Bryocarpum (B. himalaicum, Hook, 

 fil. et Thorns.), a yellow-flowered plant with a transversely dehiscing 



