COLLECTIONS OF 1914, 
6l 
have its own form of what is, probably, one pervasive species. 
There is a straggling Michaelmas Daisy with the habit of a poor 
A. Thomsoni, from cool, damp groves and rill-sides about Siku, 
which may have affinities with F 458, as indeed may also 
F 455 ; though this is less likely, as the affinities of F 455 are 
rather with F 290. 
Chinese Asters of 1914 : — 
ai • ( F I 3 I a • 1 F 2 4 6 
Alpine group I F 22(3 Acns group | p ^ 
Diplostephioid group Turbinelloid group jp 
Astilbe sp. (F 385) is possibly only A. Davidi. It was abundant in 
a small limit in the cool stony bottom of the great Siku gorge. 
The only flower-spike, however, that I saw opening (and a 
mutilated one at that) seemed to be of a pale, soft pink. F 384 
abounded in the alpine open turf above the Da-hai-go in the 
Satanee range, and is perhaps the same, though its habit seemed 
a trifle larger, and its spike (all I saw of it) longer and heavier. 
Atragene sp. (F 315) (or Clematis sp.), a handsome blue-flowered 
slight trailer, occurring very rarely in the Minchow district, by 
me neither collected nor seen, and the seed so scant and imperfect 
as not to have seemed distributable when first sent. (Coll. W. 
Purdom.) 
Bauhinia Faberi (F 134) lives on very hot rocky slopes about 
the Blackwater round about Siku. It is a low flopping shrub, 
with very pretty, graceful foliage, tiny white flowers (not at all 
papilionaceous-looking), and very large rusty-coloured pods in 
autumn. 
Berberis sp. (F 80). — A big bush of 8-10 feet, its stately boughs 
well set with close pendent tails of pale-yellow blossom, with 
the heavy scent of Lilium auratum, and a succession of scarlet 
berries in drooping racemes. Subalpine coppice about Satanee. 
Berberis sp. (F 355). — A small-growing plant, abundant in the open 
upper alpine turf of the Siku-Satanee ranges, where it forms a 
densely spinous jungle about 12-24 inches high, and every spray 
becomes in autumn a voluminous unbroken spout of pure blood- 
scarlet with its tight-bunched berries. It is a marvellous sight 
in fruit, and eminent as affecting the rather hotter, drier region 
of the Alps, about Siku. For open sun-baked downs it should 
make admirable covert. 
Berberis sp. (F 356) is the one Barberry of low and hot places. 
I know it only in the Siku district, occurring here and there in 
the torrid pebbly slopes and grilling little graveyards about the 
Blackwater. It is a gracious bush of small, holly-like foliage, 
about 5-6 feet high, each spray being bowed beneath a burden 
of close-clustered oval berries of luscious bloomy vermilion, 
glowing like living lamps of colour. (? B. Potanini.) 
