COLLECTIONS OF 1914. 
69 
? Cremanthodium sp. (F 212) lives in cool, moist ledges under lime- 
stone cliffs (such as cry aloud for Soldanella) at great elevations 
in the Min S'an. Its glossy foliage is beautifully crenulate, and 
it carried several bell-shaped yellow flowers to a 6-inch stem 
(thereby making its name yet more doubtful) in August. 
? Cremanthodium sp. (F 239) is, I believe, merely the last, repeated 
under a new number — unless it be a different and divergent form 
with more flowers. This cannot yet be distributed. 
Cypripedium sp. (F 58 and 85). — This is the great Red Slipper of 
the subalpine slopes and copses all up the Border, peculiarly 
magnificent near Satanee, on loose soil of a coppice, burnt out 
some two seasons ago. These Slippers in the relationship of 
C. ventricosum-speciosum are still very obscure and tangled ; 
whether this be C. Francheti or C. fasciolatum, or neither, or 
both, I cannot yet pretend to discern. It is a plant of stout and 
leafy stem, from the upper foliage of which escapes the voluminous 
baggy blossom, densely lined in rose-crimson on a dead-white 
ground, and with a pouch of deeper flush. Striking as is this 
bloom, there is a Cypripedium, form or species, occurring rarely 
in the Siku gorges (where the common leafy stalwart does not 
appear), which yet surpasses it — a thing of smaller, slighter growth, 
with few leaves, and those near the base of the 8-inch stem, 
leaving free play to a long and rather woolly peduncle supporting 
an enormous bulge-bagged blossom of very much deeper colour, 
especially in the uniform maroon crimson of the inflated round 
lip ( ? C. fasciolatum). This is represented only by specimens 
and a painting ; of the others I have sent home pods to an 
Orchidist to raise. [F 85 is C. tibeticum.] 
Cypripedium luteum (F 138) is a most glorious plant, precisely, 
copying C. hirsutum (C. spectabile) in all points of stature, 
amplitude, and habit, but that the comely round flowers are 
of a clear yellow, with a waxen sulphur lip. The segments are 
sometimes mottled with a few fleshy stains, the lip is freckled 
within, and the staminode in some forms, but not all, is, or goes, 
of a rich chocolate which gives Proud Margaret her especial 
look of well-fed intelligence. The Red Slippers haunt the scrub 
and copse edges up to about 8,000 feet, and there begins C. luteum, 
occasionally joining them, but beginning thus at the top of their 
distribution, and ascending for nearly 1,000 feet higher. We 
saw it in bud amid the overblown Red Slippers opposite Satanee 
in the end of May, and peasants, seeing us pick the red ones 
(which are powerful magic), told us also of the yellow ; in the Siku 
gorges the plant occurs handsomely, and Purdom has a record 
of it from a wood beyond Minchow. It grows behind Siku in 
sudden outbursts, here a great patch or an abundant colony, 
and then no more. Usually it likes a half-shady slope, in and 
out among scant scrub on the edge of a glade ; but I have seen 
it magnificent in shallow moss and mould on the top of a boulder 
