COLLECTIONS OF 1914. 
55 
I am now (1916) quite resolved that it is a distinct species]. It 
grows in tight little colonies, has long, reddish, deep-set bulbs, and 
rather nodding heads of the loveliest Puschkinia-blue blossoms 
on stems of 4 inches in mid-August, of colour much paler and 
softer than in any form of A . cyaneum (unless it was a frost which 
had bitten them into that beauteous pallor). And the last of our 
blue Garlics is A. Purdomii, F 321 — a most dainty little grassy 
thing of 4 inches, the whole tuft breaking into a shower of rather 
dark-blue heads. This was collected by Purdom from shallow 
shelves of soil in the limestone rocks of Lotus Mountain ; blooming 
in August-September no seed could be got, but its discoverer, 
ascending the mountain in the snows of February, hacked out 
three or four tufts from 3 feet of ice, so that it cannot be as yet 
distributed. 
Amphir aphis albescens (F 146). — This well-known thing, which I 
consider rather ugly, I have only sent for fear its friends might 
otherwise complain of its omission. It is very general in the 
limestone river-shingles of South Kansu and Tibet, at subalpine 
elevations. 
Antennaria sp. — A universal moorland wayside weed all over Kansu, 
with umbels of white everlastings on 8-inch stems, only really 
silvery and attractive when the seed-fluffs are gone, leaving the 
naked receptacle a glistering flat star. I feel it too much a 
rubbish to be yet distributed. 
Androsace longifolia (F 94). — I give this wonderful plant a very 
exalted rank among my possibilities of this last year. In appear- 
ance the most delicate and glorious of high-alpines, it is so far 
from being alpine at all that it is only found at low elevations in 
the loess district, affecting particularly steep and torrid banks 
of iron-hard loam, or loamy shingle, where it forms wide carpets 
of splayed-out dark-green rosettes, snowed under in early May 
with a profusion of stemless big white flowers that give it the 
look of an albino A. alpina glorified beyond recognition. It is 
always found by itself, on cliffs and scarps and banks uninhabit- 
able to most other plants, and it never ascends much above 6,000 
feet, luxuriating on the burning slopes about the Blackwater 
round Siku at 4,500. A. longifolia gave hope, in fact, of being 
a high-alpine-looking Androsace of the very best, but easily 
attainable by any sunny garden that can give it a hard, hot, 
and stony slope. It is of extraordinary beauty, and though 
technically a Chamaejasme, because it sometimes has two flowers 
or more to its microscopic stems, usually has much more the 
effect of an Aretia, specially lavish in its carpets of flat snow. 
[Alas, it is not easy, seeming to be as exacting in the way of hot, 
dry treatment as its kindred are in the way of alpine (1916).] 
Androsace mucronifolia (F 319) returns to the tradition of the 
family, and is a very-high-alpine, never found except in the last 
fine turf on the crests and ridges at 13,000-14,000 feet, along the 
