98 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
is happy, with a yearly sowing of seed broadcast over fine 
moist turfy tracts. [In cultivation it becomes perennial and so 
very much larger in growth and flower as to become hardly 
distinguishable from P. gemmifera.'] 
Primula gemmifera No. 13 (F 168) is represented by the original speci- 
mens of P. gemmifera in the Petrograd Herbarium, the sheets of 
which include a poor form of P. Wardii or P. sibirica. The August- 
borne blossoms are very large and comfortable-faced, and fat and 
round, of a melting milky pink with a yellow throat and delicate 
fragrance. This charmer begins in the moister upmost silt-slopes 
of Thundercrown (where it has a strange little offshoot or poor 
cousin, in P. No. 9, 2,000 feet lower down the mountain), but its 
main abundance is in the Min S'an, very high up, at 12,000-13,000 
feet, where it loves the open earth-fans of the steep fell-sides, 
densely dotting the fine loam and shingle with its solitary crowns, 
so frail and scant of root ; but thence even spreads by myriads 
into the finer alpine turf all round, and sends its seedlings far 
down into the valleys beneath, where their results occur in little 
colonies or bright specklings of colour, along the grassy or shingly 
levels of the beck-bottoms in the gorges and cool glens and 
shady places, very different from the naked exposure of the high- 
alpine heights, where it is at home in the barer moister slopes 
and channels of clammy and stony calcareous loam. [Abundant 
on the Da-Tung Alps also in 1915.] 
Primula No. 14 (F 191) is P. Maximowiczii. This, the hyacinth- 
flowered, many-tiered stalwart, has an enormous range over all 
the grassy alps of Northern Central and Western China. Let it be 
noted that this must surely be both hardy and soundly perennial 
(unless where it may flower itself to death), but that it is a 
typical turf-Primula of nivalis habit, and therefore would be 
best if grown in grass on a cool, well-watered, and perfectly- 
drained slope, kept rigidly dry in winter. Stagnation and 
clogging damp will be its detestation, especially in the over- 
rich soil which it would clearly appreciate in summer. I have 
not yet seen it in flower, but it abounds in the hay of the cooler 
slopes on the Tibetan Alps, not descending to the flat and sedgy 
glen-bottoms like P. Purdomii. [I do not believe there is any 
real difference between this and P. tangutica.] 
Primula alsophila sp. no v. No. 15 (F 178) is a most charming little 
beauty of the woodland group. It runs freely about with 
light frail runners, in the profound cold moss-banks in the 
highest Tibetan forest, towards the summit of the ridges, 
at some 12,000 feet, covering the deep beds of leaf-mould with 
a carpet of sharp-lobed, bright-green foliage, above which spring 
dainty little scapes of 4-5 inches in July, each usually flourishing, 
on long fine pedicels, a pair or more of charming rose-mauve 
flowers, wide and flat and starry, with a pale eye and darker 
tube. It has a most especial daintiness and charm ; and its 
