100 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
brownish black [but I think P. tangutica is P. Maximowiczii and 
no more]. 
Primula No. 19 (F 195) requires very careful watching, as this 
number contains certainly two distinct species, and possibly four. 
The number stands primarily for P. " cognata," which I think 
is undilutedly genuine in the earliest lot of seed sent under the 
name (and already germinated) — a most beautiful species of the 
Auriculate group, with lush flat rosettes of glabrous foliage, in 
the vertical cliffs and shingle-walls of the lower Tibetan region 
about J6-ni, and short scapes of an inch or two, generously 
furnished with large and deliciously fragrant flowers of rosy- 
lavender. It was first collected by Purdom in 1911, but has 
never yet been shown. Unfortunately, we were too late in the 
Min S'an for its flowering season, and as our reports had a certain 
ambiguity as to the difference between " form " and " species," 
it was only too tardily that I discovered that at least one supposed 
" form," from the Lotus Mountain, was in reality an apparently 
perfectly distinct species, of similar stature, but with densely 
white-powdered foliage ; which leaves me suspecting that the 
same may ultimately have to be said of another so-called " form " 
from Monk Mountain. Accordingly I have labelled all sendings 
of P. "cognata" with the name of their district, and advise 
that all these be kept apart and carefully watched, as my name 
at present is such a chimaera. It even, I believe, will be found 
to include a few stray seeds of P. No. 20, from collected crowns 
sent down with the true cognatas, to ripen their pods in J6-ni. 
In the earliest lots, however, which alone were large enough 
for general distribution, I am certain that P. "cognata" will 
be found pure, and possibly unalloyed except for the Lotus 
Mountain plant, which undoubtedly comprises the majority, if 
not the whole, of the second sending, received in England 
about December 24.* 
Primula No. 20 (F 196) is blurred with the last, and very scanty in 
supply, even if sent at all. It need not be regretted; it is a starvel- 
ing little thing, replacing P. scopulorum in the highest cool cliffs 
and grassy rock-ledges of the uppermost Min S'an. It has the 
puny look of P. yunnanensis — a feeble tiny rosette, and a scape 
of an inch, more or less, with two or more flowers. These we 
never saw, unless some rather attractive starry recurving blooms 
of lilac-mauve from the great Ardjeri gorge did indeed represent 
this species in a stout and drawn-up form (for here the scape had 
attained 3-4 inches, and the abundant crowns seemed stronger 
* [P. cognata is so far a myth unless it lurks in this lot, which is all really 
P. stenocalyx, the prevailing Primula of the Da-Tung Alps, and a species of 
amazing vigour alike in germination and growth in the garden* In this 191 4 
lot I have even noticed that among the hundreds of great stout plants which 
are the powderless P. stenocalyx genuina, one of my own plants belongs to 
P. stenocalyx dealbata, the powdered form which in the Da-Tung Alps replaces 
the other at higher elevations.] 
