COLLECTIONS OF 1914. 
95 
wind or dash of hail. In autumn the whole thing dies back 
to a white scaly bud like a wee bulb of Lilium ; some of these 
have also been sent, and I hope may arrive alive. [Alas, none 
survive ; nor did the seed germinate.] 
Primula sp. No. 7 (F 86) is almost certainly no more than P. lichian- 
gensis, and, as such, I have not troubled to collect it for general 
distribution, as it is now so generally grown. I do not very 
greatly love or admire it. Its interest lies in this far-northerly 
extension of its original distribution in the alps of Yunnan. 
It abounds at mid-elevations on Thundercrown, not at all 
avoiding hot dry flanks and exposures, but growing for choice 
in scant sunny scrub, deep woodland, and along the beshrubbed 
brows of cliff or boulder, from which its stiff and starry umbels 
of bright and golden-eyed magenta pink flaunt or flap with fine 
effect in May. In the main Min S'an its place is taken by F 197. 
Primula Woodwardii No. 8 (F 116) is a most gorgeous species of the 
Nivalis group. Purdom originally collected it on the foothills of 
Monk Mountain, and it was shown by Veitch at the 1913 Con- 
ference under the false name of P. "purpurea " Royle. It differs 
absolutely and utterly from every form of P. nivalis in being 
completely smooth and glossy and devoid of powder in all 
parts of its growth. It forms a deep, woody stock, sheathed 
in brown membrane, and ending in a few fat white roots ; this 
supports a cabbage-like tuft of dark-green foliage, and an 8-12- 
inch stout stem, carrying a great head of deep violet stars in June, 
on pedicels so distinct and slender that the cluster is a rayed wheel 
of blossom, not a piled dome. It grows in the open coarse turf 
of the alps, dotted here and there, between 9,000 and 13,000 feet, 
blazing from afar amid the lavender and gold and citron of the 
other reigning flowers that constellate the grass. Its long stock, 
and the rough herbage and steep slopes that it affects, all indi- 
cate that it may prove to possess a typical Nivalis sensitiveness 
to the least deficiency in drainage or moisture. All turf-Primulas, 
in fact, should, I think, be treated as such in cultivation, their 
coarse enveloping mat of grass and rootage equalizing their 
moisture in summer, and draining it uniformly away ; while in 
winter it dies down upon their dormant crowns like a dry thatch, 
over which springy mattress lies the warm coverlid of the winter's 
snow. I should, indeed, make an Alpenwiese on a raking but 
well-watered slope for nearly all the Nivalis group, and especially 
for the forms of P. nivalis itself. P. Woodwardii is a joy to collect, 
with stalwart oval pods of hearty brown, standing starkly up from 
the moorland on lengthened scapes of a foot and more ; two lots 
have been sent, as 116a and 1166, on the chance that the 
Monk Mountain form may perhaps prove in some way different 
from that of Thundercrown. In the main Min S'an I cannot be 
certain that it occurs, though I greatly suspect that this and no 
other was a very stalwart nivalis Primula of the upper grass 
