76 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
waysides, in the banks and little level lawns beside the road in 
the J6-ni district, not ascending above 8,000 feet, and hugging 
always the flatter places of the loess region, in such hard, dry loarn, 
and in such open, sunny places as those preferred by G. Cruciata. 
Gentiana sp. (F 332) represents the large-ovaried species from the 
Min S'an, of which the Thundercrown development has been 
sent out as F 217. 
Gentiana sp. (F 442) comes from the Min S'an grass-lands, and was 
harvested by a Chinese collector. No more can be said ; it 
is perhaps one of the hideous Cluster-headed Gentians of the 
Macrophylla-mongolica group that so abound in the Chinese 
Alps, and are yearly collected in huge bales for " medicine." 
Gentiana sp. (F 443) is a pretty annual, from the high alpine turf 
all along the Min S'an. From its frail crown it sends out a 
few frail prostrate sprays, supporting at intervals perfectly 
erect, very longrtubed, 5-pointed stars of clear straw-yellow, 
of charming effect among the grass in August. 
Geranium Pylzowianum (F 201).' — There are many field-Geraniums up 
and down the grass-lands of Tibet, but none of them likely to be 
of any garden-value — rather weedy herbaceous things for the 
most part, akin to G. sylvaticum. F 201, however, is of quite 
a different kidney — being a high-alpine species, found only in the 
topmost screes of shale or limestone at 13,000-15,000 feet, where 
it abounds in such masses as to cover the whole vast expanse of 
desolation with the fluttering flights of its innumerable big flowers 
of palest pink in August crowded on footstalks of 2-3 inches, all 
over the concise clump of each plant, making mounds of soft 
pallor all up and down the desolation. In effect it approaches 
nearest to G. argenteum, but is much neater, much more lavishly 
beblossomed, and in colour of an even paler and more evanescent 
pink. It is the only important Min S'an alpine which does not 
seem to extend down to Thundercrown ; and its season is so 
awkward that it was only after great difficulty and exertion 
that two seeds were hacked up out of the ice-locked adamant 
of the mountain in autumn. 
Hedysarum multijugum (F 103) occurs in big stretches down the river- 
shingles of the Blackwater, between Kiai Chow and Wen Hsien, 
but its main distribution seems higher up, about Siku, where it 
luxuriates on the hot, hard, bare and shingly hills of loess about 
the town, and even wanders north about a day's journey up the 
Nan Ho. [It abounds also by the mile far away in the North, 
in the shingle-flats of the Da-Tung River.] It is a most beautiful 
plant, forming low masses of glaucescent foliage from a woody 
trunk, from which rise foot-high racemes, very graceful and 
delicate, beset with large blossoms of rose-purple-crimson in a 
long and elegant flight. Its bloom is in May, and the prickly 
rough burrs that hold the seed await the frosts of November 
before they dry up and fall. 
