J 78 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Section Farinosa. 



There are, to my thinking, only two good garden plants in the 

 Section Farinosa— limiting that section in the way I do here : one of 

 them our European P. frondosa, Janka, and the other the Japanese 

 P. modesta, Bisset et Moore, of which I write. The plant commonly 

 met with in gardens as P. frondosa, Janka, is certainly not open to 

 the doubt cast upon its identity by Pax who states that true P. frondosa, 

 Janka, is destitute of meal. Original types in the Herbarium of the 

 Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, contradict that statement. Its 

 silver meal is replaced in the Japanese plant by golden meal. P. 

 modesta, Bisset et Moore, is found over a considerable area in Japan 

 and from seed I collected on Nyohozan a crop of it has been grown at 

 Edinburgh. It is as hardy as P. frondosa, Janka. A xeromorph of 

 P. modesta, Bisset et Moore, is the plant described by Franchet as 

 P. Faurieae, Franchet. 



Japanese Species of the Farinosa Section. 



P. modesta, Bisset et Moore (fig. 85) 



P. Faurieae, Franch. 



Section Nivalis. 



The only species of the Nivalis section that appears in the Japanese 

 flora is P. eximia, Greene. It is a microform of P. nivalis, Pallas, and 

 is a robust little plant, with flowers large for its size. It is not in 

 cultivation, and its introduction is to be desired in the hope that it 

 may give us an adaptable nivalis form. The presence of this species 

 in the Japanese area, with its extension into the Aleutian and Pribilof 

 Islands, is a fact of distribution of some interest. It is one of the 

 links by which P. nivalis, Pallas, encircles the globe in the northern 

 hemisphere. 



Japanese Species of the Nivalis Section. 

 P. eximia, Greene 



SSECTION CUNEIFOLIA. 



The section Cuneifolia presents us in Japan with specific forms 

 which have a strong physiognomic resemblance to species of the 

 European Alps, but always without glands : rosette forms with 

 obovate or obcuneate leaves more or less toothed, having a winged 

 base, and sending up short scapes bearing umbellate trusses of lilac- 

 purple flowers. In fruit, the capsule is enclosed in the calyx. 

 P. cuneifolia, Ledeb., in its typical form and in its microforms P. haku- 

 sanensis, Franch., and P. heterodonta, Franch., is widely spread in 

 Japan. The species is one of those that link the Primula distribution 

 of the old world with the new, extending as it does in microforms 

 through Tschuktschiland and into the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. 

 Of it as a plant of cultivation I have no record, nor of P. nipponica, 

 Yatabe, the other Japanese species of the section ; but their bright 



