COLLECTIONS OF 1914. 
87 
in May into a furze of minute white flowers in clusters, to be 
followed in early July by a lavish display of gorgeous and 
refulgent ruby-scarlet berries. It belongs to the stonier places 
in the hot region of the Blackwater, up to Siku, where it even 
grows happily along the hard loess ramp of the city-wall itself. 
[Far up the deserts of northern Asia, Nitraria grows where all 
other vegetation fails, and for the northern peoples its fruits are 
the staple hope of sustenance.] 
Onosma sp. (F 3) has not been collected. It fills all the torrid banks, 
in the torrid region of the Blackwater and the Nan Ho, with low 
clumped masses of narrow grey foliage, from which, in April, 
unfurl croziers of long pale-blue bugles, very pretty, but not 
large enough, and with the unfortunate notion of attempting a 
copy, at all points, of the supreme and inimitable Lithospermum 
gramini folium. 
Ophiopogon sp. (F 302) (? 0. kansuensis) occurs at one point in the 
Nan Ho Valley, on cool ledges of rock, or at the track-side, or 
about the roots of light scant scrub — forming evergreen mats of 
very dark, wiry, grass-fine foliage, from which spring 6-inch 
spikes in July, unfolding a spire of lovely crystalline and waxen 
stars, seeming as if carved out of lavender- or rose-flushed ivory, 
and followed by balls of blue-black fruit in November. I con- 
sidered it a most lovely, dainty thing. [It abounds in Southern 
Central Kansu down into Szechwan.] 
Oreocharis Henryana (F 262) grows in similar sites to Boea, yet not 
only likes cool ones as markedly, but is much more partial to damp 
atmosphere, and even to a certain damp in its soil, growing mag- 
nificent on dank, mossy limestone rocks in the depths of the Mo- 
Ping canon, and often abounding — as in the debouchure of the 
Siku gorge, and at intervals in the lower reaches of the Nan Ho 
Valley- — on very steep banks of a stony, rather clammy silt, which 
grows a certain film of earth-moss characteristic of such cloggy, 
cool surfaces — from which it spreads happily in and out of the 
lower fringes of scant scrub and herbage, always preferring an 
aspect steep to the point of being sheer. Here the rosettes are 
dully green and only hairy, resembling exactly that specially 
sinuate form of Ramondia pyrenaica which is called quercifolia. 
The scapes are slightly shorter and stouter than in the last, with 
fewer and much larger flowers — little thimble-shaped inverted 
Gloxinias in a charming blend of shrimp-pink and coppery 
flesh-tones, borne in a flying panicle in August. It ought to prove 
even easier than F 261, and at least as delightful, in similar 
situations ; both continue their mimicry of Ramondia in having 
quite microscopic seed, which should be carefully sown accord- 
ingly on a silty surface and most tenderly watched. 
Osteomeles sp. (F 408) (probably 0. anthyllidifolia) abounds all over 
the hottest bare slopes of the hot, dry loess region of the Black- 
water, seed having been collected from a grave-copse outside 
