COLLECTIONS OF 1914. 
85 
abounds [and in the northerly ranges of the Da-Tung is clearly 
in the very centre of its home, so abundant over the alps in such 
unspeakable beauty that one feels quite sick with the ecstasy 
of the sight]. In the Minchow district it trenches on cultivated 
land, and there, at the edges of culture-patches on the rounded 
green hills, it becomes quite unrecognizably splendid in the steep 
enriched embankments down the slope, waxing into masses of 
foliage a foot across and almost as deep, with forty or fifty great 
swaying vases of lavender all hovering at once, on 2-3-feet stems, 
above the tangle of leaves below — thus making it evident that 
M. quintuplinervia, while it should answer happily to fair alpine 
cultivation, should also be handsomely responsive to specially 
generous treatment. It blooms from June to August ; on Thunder- 
crown there was a notable little rocky grot which in June was 
filled with a rose-scented jungle of rose-pink Pseonies, above and 
amid which floated the innumerable expended blue butterflies 
of the Poppy. [Seed of 1914 was shy of germination, but that of 
the Da-Tung Alps comes up like cress. 1915.] 
Meconopsis Prattii (F 136). — Seed was distributed under the name 
of M. rudis. In Fedde's key to the race, M. rudis has stem- 
leaves up to the middle of the spire, while M. racemosa has 
neither bracts nor stem-leaves at all. Unfortunately, in the 
diagnosis of M. racemosa, a full description is given of the 
stem-leaves already declared to be non-existent ! On the whole 
I am driven to the conclusion that my Kansu plant, sent out as 
M. rudis, is probably M. Prattii, and M. Prattii alone. The 
specimens and seedlings will, however, repay investigation, as 
these blue Poppies are not, as yet, of any final and absolute 
distinctness. M. Prattii, at least, takes two clearly-marked forms. 
So far as I can judge, from Thundercrown up into the foothills 
of the Min S'an it is a dense and stocky plant forming a close 
8-10-inch mace of gorgeous dawn-blue blossoms, woven of silk 
and opals. In the highest craggy alps above Ardjeri it takes a 
new character ; the stems are taller, darker, barer, the pedicels 
are very much longer, so that the inflorescence is a loose and 
irregular broken flight of flowers, instead of a solid huddled 
mass. (This may, of course, be merely a later stage of blossom, 
yet had to me the look of a clear varietal, if not specific, difference.) 
All the seed sent belongs to the stocky Thundercrown form ; 
in every variety this Poppy (or Poppies), it must be noted, stands 
apart from all its grass-loving kin, in being always and only 
found in the gaunt screes and stone-slopes and precipices of the 
highest limestone or shaly ridges from 12,000-14,000 feet. In other 
words, it is born and made for the moraine,* and there should be 
sown again and again, that its biennial splendour may annually 
repeat the glory of light with which its dense spires of amassed 
azures illuminate the vast and lifeless stone-slopes on the highest 
* [It much appreciates a fuller diet, though.] 
