COLLECTIONS OF 1914. 
65 
russet into the bole's silver. The foliage is that of a wee elm, 
borne in clouds of lacy filminess most exquisite to see, especially 
in the emerald freshness of spring or the clear amber of autumn. 
It is a well-known beauty in Oriental art, but I rather doubt its 
being wild in South-West Kansu, where I have only noticed it 
in warm grave-coppices, or about little temples or pleasure- 
houses beneath the sunny flanks of the hills, in places rather 
chosen-looking and deliberate. 
Celtis ? sp. (F 317) may not be a Celtis at all. It has the same 
smooth grey bole as the last, but is a smaller and very scantly 
branching tree, with bay-like foliage and little stalked fruits 
like myrtles. From the grave-coppice outside Kwanting ; not 
yet distributed. 
Cimicifuga sp. (F 445). — This superb thing lives luxuriant in 
the alp-meadows about J6-ni, and far up into the Tibetan 
highlands, extending south-east to the Thundercrown gorges, 
where it is rare and poorer in the drier circumstances. The 
basal volume of foliage is ample, sumptuous, glossy and splendid ; 
from this arise in August the stately stems of 6-7 feet, deploying 
a great foaming spout of cream-white blossom in a broken panicle, 
suggesting Spiraea Aruncus on a quadrupled scale of glory. 
This will clearly repay the very richest conditions of cultivation 
in a moist but sunny spot. (Can it be C. racemosa ?) 
Clematis sp. (F 211) is a magnificent floppet from the upper reaches 
of the wooded alpine valleys opposite J6-ni in Tibet, where it 
sprawls upon the bushes, and in August sends up in pairs, on 
very long pedicels, a profusion of enormous snow-white flowers 
of six amply rounded segments, and a general resemblance to 
some small Jackmannii hybrid. 
Clematis aethusifolia (F 301) is a rather uncommon occurrence on 
steep wayside banks of loess in the J6-ni district- — a very frail, 
slight weakling of a foot or so, with a quantity of urceolate little 
straw-coloured flowers, so campanuloid in effect that one thinks 
at once of a yellow Campanula Bellardii growing in lax tangle. 
Clematis tangutica obtusiuscula (F 307, 342) unfurls a coil almost 
as long as its name over the river-shingles of all the streams 
about J6-ni, ascending to about 10,000 feet on the fringes of 
the alpine coppice. In August it is all a dancing carillon of big, 
yellow bells like gay golden Fritillaries, succeeded in November 
by the most voluminous fluffs of soft silver that I know among 
these Clematids. 
Clematis nannophylla (F 321) belongs to the Siku district, and ceases 
north of Tan Ch'ang in the Nan Ho Valley (though reappearing 
far away up country on the downs below Lanchow). It loves very 
hot, steep, bare, and stony places of loess or shingle, over the torrid 
hills about the Blackwater and the Nan Ho. It makes a thick 
stiff-stemmed bush of curled parsley-like foliage, usually about 
18 inches high and 2 feet through, lavishly set in August with 
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