PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



193 



soils it is found better not to sow till spring. In stronger soils the 

 plants may also stand two years if it is desired, though it is generally 

 safer to divide yearly. 



Border Auriculas enjoy a rather stiffer soil, and especially one that 

 contains chalk. They are derived from natives of the Alps and are 

 in beautiful ranges of colouring of purple, crimson and yellow. The 

 border varieties are commonly called Alpine Auriculas to distinguish 

 them from the show kinds, though the name is ambiguous and even 

 misleading, as there are several Primula species of the Auricula class, 

 natives of the Alps, that are grown in rock gardens. The most showy 

 and easily grown of the border Auriculas are some very large forms 

 having yellow and brown -bronze flowers with a white eye that have 

 been raised in Scotland. 



The second group of Primulas for popular use — namely, those 

 best suited for rock gardens — will partly overlap the first, for all the 

 border Auriculas will be in place in the lower rocky regions, while the 

 best of the true Alpine species, with their white varieties and a number 

 of natural hybrids, will find places in other cool rocky clefts and hollows. 

 The prettiest of these will be among Primula Allionii, P. glutinosa, 

 P. hirsula, P. integrifolia, P. marginata, P. minima, and P. viscosa ; 

 the planter bearing in mind that some of these belong to the calcareous 

 and some to the granitic regions. Thus P. Auricula, P. integrifolia, 

 and P. minima will be thankful for lime in any form, for preference, 

 limestone rock ; while P. hirsuta, P. marginata, P. glutinosa, and 

 P. viscosa will flourish in sandy peat with granitic rock or sandstone. 



The Primulas that, from the garden point of view, it is convenient 

 to put in the third division are those that may be regarded as bog 

 plants. These will include the pretty little P. farinosa of our own 

 northern moors and of Alpine marshland, three Himalayan species, 

 and one from Japan. The Himalayan are P. involucrata, a beautiful 

 little Primula, quite easy to grow and strangely neglected ; the early- 

 blooming P. rosea, with buds of brilliant crimson followed by the full 

 bloom of rosy pink, and P. sikkimensis. This, when well grown in a 

 fairly large mass rising from black boggy ground, and seen in shade, is 

 a wonderful picture of plant-beauty ; the full heads of hanging sulphur 

 bells having that curiously luminous quality that is only observed in 

 this and one or two other flowers of this rare colouring. Lastly, of 

 the well-known bog Primulas there is P. japonica. The type colour 

 is a rather rank magenta red, of a quality that does not please a critical 

 colour-eye, but there is a good white variety and many intermediate 

 shades of pleasing pink. 



It is still well grown at VVisley (fig. 97) , but it was a wonderful sight to 

 see it for the first time some thirty or more years ago, when it was com- 

 paratively a new garden plant, as grown by the late Mr. G. F. Wilson, 

 by the side of a shallow peaty ditch in shade in the lower ground. 

 It showed a fine plant in good quantity, so placed that it could 

 develop to the utmost its capacity for the display of beauty and the 

 evidence of well-being. It was one of the many good lessons taught 



vol. xxxix. o 



