208 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



at the base — the spurred Primulas they might be called. The flowers 

 appear before the leaves, and the scape and pedicels usually elongate 

 to double their length with the ripening of the fruit. There is 

 no more natural or more easily recognized group than this. The 

 flowers are fairly large and brightly coloured — a peculiarity well 

 exemplified in P. rosea (fig. 100) itself. The corolla tube is long, narrow, 

 gradually expanding near the throat ; and the mouth, though usually 

 of a paler colour than the limbs, is not furnished with an annulus. 



But I must hasten to observe that P. concinna (fig. 99) and P. tibetica 

 (especially the former), though placed by me in this group, should 

 probably be transferred to a section by themselves, and possibly along 

 with P. tenella. I leave them here as a provisional matter. Their 

 removal would very nearly make the section be confined to the Western 

 Himalaya and Western Tibet. P. tibetica has the characteristic 

 spurred bracts of the series, but the bracts in P. concinna, like those 

 in P. hazarica, are thickened below, but not, I believe, spurred. With 

 an Indian distribution so strikingly Western, one would naturally 

 look for Central Asiatic if not European species. And in this we 

 are not disappointed, for there are several, and one, P. egalliccensis, 

 occurs in Greenland. P. longiflora takes its name from its very 

 long straight corolla tube — a character upon which I have laid some 

 stress in defining the section. But of all the members of this series 

 P. sibirica, Jacq., with its more robust East-Himalayan form, P. 

 involucrata (fig. 101), may be said to occur on all the Alpine Himalaya 

 from West Tibet to Kashmir and Sikkim, and is distributed through 

 North and Central Asia to Europe, North and Arctic America. It, in 

 fact has nearly as wide a distribution as P. farinosa, and indeed these 

 two plants would appear to have been often confused the one with 

 the other, though the capitate condition of the one and the umbellate 

 form of the other should have instantly rendered such ambiguity 

 impossible even had the spurred bract of sibirica been overlooked. 



All the more characteristic members of this series frequent damp 

 situations and grow singly, though often in more or less compact 

 patches : that is to say, a few yards may be literally covered with a 

 particular species, though ordinarily they do not form aggregated 

 clumps. Professor Balfour informs me that this species (P. sibirica) 

 has many varieties, tall and short, dark and light, large-flowered 

 and small-flowered, and that all are easily grown in Edinburgh, and 

 that it flowers and sows itself freely. P. sibirica is invariably met with 

 as a solitary plant, and seems to manifest the elongation of the scape 

 with the growth of the associated vegetation to a remarkable extent, 

 the mature plant becoming a single scape 6 to 8 inches in height, 

 and a rosette of withered leaves lying on the ground. In Edinburgh 

 P. involucrata has proved a good hardy species, and flowers and seeds 

 freely in the open. 



Most of the species of spurred Primulas frequent sandy and gritty 

 deposits, such as the tongues of soft soil that accompany the rivulets 

 draining from ice. I can think of nothing more surprisingly beautiful 



