46 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
purple-blue, and magenta. Gentians bulk largely in the autumn 
flora, the finest of all Gentiana heptaphylla. 
This huge range acts as a rain-screen, consequently the ranges 
eastwards towards Mili are more or less barren in comparison. 
Again, far to the west is another wonderfully prolific region, the 
Mekong-Salwin divide south of Dokerla, one in which I spent some 
time in 1905, and which I hope yet to explore more thoroughly. All 
the collections of that year were lost completely through the upheaval 
caused by a local rebellion of the lamas of the Upper Mekong. From 
what I saw then and collected, I should say it is by far the richest 
area of any yet known. Specimens of a few new species were saved 
from the wreck, such as Rhododendron gymnanthum, R. Stewartianum f 
R. chasmanthum, and the beautiful and curious R. Forrestii. This 
last is a most interesting shrub, with large fleshy flowers of a deep 
blood-crimson shade. It has the habit of ivy ; attached by roots on 
the under surface of its stems it covers almost perpendicular cliffs 
and boulders with its bullate glossy foliage. The leaves are very 
small, broadly ovate and highly coloured ; the blooms pendulous, 
produced singly in the axils. On those mountains was first discovered 
Meconopsis speciosa, one of the finest of the genus. Somewhere north- 
west of there, north of lat. 29 0 and west of long. 98 0 , will probably be 
found the greatest concentration of the genus Rhododendron, and 
possibly the same might be said of Primula, for my experience during 
eight years spent in the region is that as one goes farther north-west 
the number of species is continually added to. 
