86 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
crests of Tibet. Every part of the growth is virulently prickly, 
and the fierce hardened thorns of the fruiting stage make its 
sturdy pyramids of capsules an anguish to collect, unless with a 
mailed fist and a pair of tongs. 
Meconopsis punicea (F 175) far surpasses all English description and 
all English effort, as you begin to see it, bloodily flaunting in and 
out of the scantier coppice in the Tibetan valley-bottoms opposite 
J6-ni, first appearing at some 10,000 feet, and thence ascending 
to the great grass ridges, haunting the glade-edges and light 
bushery of the glen, until in the high open hayfields it rages 
furiously over all the hill, between 11,000 and 13,000 feet, dappling 
the distances with blood like any Poppy in an English field, and 
in the little grassy hollows along the crests, hovering in flapping 
flags of vermilion above the rippling sea of golden-eyed purple 
Asters. For in England those dim flags of scarlet flop ; on the 
Tibetan Alps they blaze and flap — huge expanded stiff goblets 
or wave-winged butterflies of incandescent blood, that compel 
from me a humble palinode to my previous rather cold description 
of M. punicea as alone I had hitherto known it, showing no 
trace of its own true sinuous and serpentine magnificence. This 
glory of the upland open hayfields, and scant cool coppice of the 
lower region in the cool Tibetan Alps should be sown broad- 
cast at home in moist rich soil amid pleasant neighbours, with 
loose scrub of Pinus montana all about to keep off excessive heat 
and drought ; it is invariably biennial, from a slight weak tap, 
and does not extend out of Tibet into the warmer, drier alps of 
Thundercrown, nor southwards (so far as I could find) into those 
of Satanee, nor northwards above the Hwang-Hor to the Da- 
Tung. 
Morina sp. (F 215). — A doubtful name ; in any case it is a pretty 
Morinoid labiate, with glossy spinous-edged foliage, and stems 
of a foot or so, with close heads of cream-coloured blossom in 
August. It haunts the higher grass-lands of the Tibetan Alps 
at some 11,000 feet ; and, though not special, has a meek 
attraction. 
Myosotis sp. (F 245) is very general all over the drier regions of South 
Kansu and Tibet, the seed having been collected on the walls 
of J6-ni. It is a small annual-biennial species, forming little 
low tangles of perfectly prostrate sprays, beset from March to 
September with a profusion of light -blue stars of a peculiar soft 
loveliness like that of Omphalodes. Carpeting a sandy patch 
round the foot of a big boulder it looks really beautiful in its 
quiet way, and ought, though not of high importance or startling- 
ness, to give a great deal of modest pleasure in suitable poor 
and gravelly levels, for preference in fullest sun. 
Nitraria Schoberi (F 98) is a gracefully arching thing, with white 
stems and narrow privet -like leaves of dark green, which forms 
into a tangled mass 4 feet high and 6 feet through, breaking 
