56 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Min S'an. Here it makes fine clumpy masses of wee rosette- 
balls, from almost every one of which in August springs a half- 
inch scape unfolding a domed round head of some three to four 
milk-white flowers with a golden eye, piling each mound of 
rosettes with snow, and showing the wild sheep of Tibet exactly 
how hawthorn smells in England. Now that A. longifolia has 
preferred so successful a claim to queen it in gardens over all 
the Aretias, a place is left vacant for A. mucronifolia to take 
sovereignty over all the villosa-Chamaejasme group. For indeed 
it is a supreme loveliness, wholly different in effect from the 
last. It bloomed unfortunately too late for seed to be got, and a 
pinch of last year's germs collected on Thundercrown in June 
were too untrustworthy and few to be distributed ; our hopes 
at present rest on dormant masses sent home in the winter. 
Androsace tibetica (F 246). — This only doubtfully occurred to me 
in the Siku district, but becomes abundant as soon as you get 
north, and up the valley of the Tao River — a lowland species 
like A. longifolia, never ascending but delighting to grow on 
the precipitous lip of loam-banks along the waysides. It is 
always happy, but does not affect shady aspects, while in the 
sunny ones that it prefers it likes best to flop in a cushion from 
the overhanging loam-cliff, while above it sprout forth a few 
fine sprays of Aster or Artemisia that keep off the full fury of 
the sun. I was too late to see it in flower, but it appears to 
vary between white and pink by all accounts (possibly containing 
two forms or species). From its clumpy, hearty habit of pointed- 
leaved rosettelets, and their generous profusion of well-furnished 
3-inch scapes, as glorious a future in gardens might be foretold 
for A. tibetica as for A. longifolia, from exactly the same ordinary 
and commonplace conditions (and so far suggesting a flattened- 
out mass of A. tibetica as almost to justify its ancient name of 
A. sempervivoides tibetica exscapa). Figured English specimens 
seem to me to give no idea of the real beauty and elegance 
of A. tibetica — at least it was long before I could believe that 
they represented the same species, as I saw it abounding in 
1914, neat and graceful in habit, and presumably brilliant as its 
cousins in flower [and in 1915 over all the flat lowland lawns of 
the Da-Tung Alps]. 
Androsace sp. (F 328). — May be only a form of the last (A tibetica). 
It was found growing beneath the cliff of F 143, in a huge 
coppiced slope of lime and gravel and limestone debris. It has 
all the habit and inflorescence (apparently) of A. tibetica, but 
as I never saw its flower I cannot say more, and, as I only got 
some three seeds, all I should say would as yet be unprofitable. 
Androsace Chamaejasme (F 142). — A tiny high-alpine form, from 
the topmost grassy ridges along the Min S'an. It is a thing 
so fragile and microscopic that neither plants nor seeds have 
been collected. It is a very old friend. 
