g6 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
alps, especially haunting the fringes of light scant scrub (as often 
does P. Woodwardii on Thundercrown) at the edges and crests of 
the little pleated folds of the downs.* 
Primula gemmifera No. 9 (Fig. 121) is a unique occurrence, which 
yielded no seed, and of which I have one sod here in Lanchow, 
which may possibly get no further. We found it only in the little 
mountain track ascending Thundercrown, between 9,000 and 9,500 
feet, where, in clammy, limy loam, it grew in wads and clusters like 
seedling boxes-full of groundsel- (and by no means, in their earlier 
stages, unlike). The majority seemed packed seedlings; only 
here and there arose the delicate 5-inch scapes in June, bearing 
flowers intermediate in appearance between P. longiflora and P. 
farinosa, but much nearer the former, round-faced, purple-tubed 
prettinesses of soft pink, above the minute leathern-grey foliage 
huddled on the ground. Abounding as it does in its limited 
area, it must seed and germinate copiously, but not perhaps 
every season, since in 1914 not the trace of a capsule was 
anywhere discoverable. It is a dainty pleasant thing, with its 
remarkable long-tubed flowers swinging horizontally usually in 
pairs ; I suspect it of being very close indeed to F 168, from 
higher up the mountain — and perhaps a mere microform. But 
F 168 is a larger, finer plant in every way, with bigger, rounder 
flowers of milky pink ; it does not grow in mats but in isolated 
crowns, and the shorter corolla-tubes are yellow and not purple. 
Primula optata sp. nov. No. 10 (F 122) is a most important and beautiful 
species of the Nivalis group, which, however, instead of a long 
perilous neck with a few roots at the end, breaks straight, in hearty 
crowns, from such a mat of stout red fibres, ramified into such a 
mesh of white rootlets, that you can weed it up in big sods like 
groundsel from the slopes of bare fine silt where it lives, between 
12,000 and 14,000 feet on Thundercrown, occasionally flaunting 
from the cliffs in big aged masses, but usually dotted about all by 
itself, over the otherwise bare earth-pans, beck-shingles, and loamy 
patches of scree beneath the crests, which it illuminates with its 
stout-pedicelled domed (and often two-tiered) heads of big 
lavender-blue stars in June, on stout powder-white scapes of 3-10 
inches, rapidly lengthening in flower and fruit. Its pods are very 
long, straight, narrow-drain-pipe-shaped, flat-ended and pallid in 
colour, going transparent at the top as in P. Maximowiczii ; 
the lovely flowers have a strong scent of an old apple-cupboard 
haunted by mice. It should prove an easy doer in loamy, well- 
watered moraine ; and never shares its home with other vegeta- 
tion, nor descends to less gaunt and barren places. It has so 
close a relationship to P. No. 22 from similar heights and 
* [No need to fuss for P. Woodwardii; so far it is one of the kindliest growers 
of the lot, and even more daintily lovely than at home, developing a white eye 
inside the ashen dark one (191 6). In the Da-Tung range it differs slightly: 
more vinous in its flower-colouring and occasionally powdered on the scape.] 
