COLLECTIONS OF 1914. 
101 
than up above. It was here growing in damp cool silt, very loose, 
about the feet of great boulders in the shade, at the mouth of 
the ravine. 
Primula No. 21 (F 197) may perhaps contain two species, of which 
only seed from Rou Ba Temple has been distributed. As I know 
the plant, in the cool silty grottos and shady boulders of the 
Ardjeri gorges, it stands in very close alliance to P. lichiangensis, 
precisely repeating its habit and foliage [but among the most 
heartily acclaimed of all my lot' — a first-class grower, and of a 
refined and vivid beauty far surpassing P. Veitchii, P. lichiangensis, 
and all the others of that graceless aniline cousinship]. In any 
case, No. 5 gives the picture and the rule for this (and is, perhaps, 
the same), and also (whether it be the same or not) for the parent 
of the other seed sent under this number — a woodland species 
from forest banks about Rou Ba Temple, and opposite J6-ni. 
[Two types may thus possibly be expected, but the prevailing one 
under this number has already captivated public affection.] 
Primula No. 22 (F 248). — For the differences between this superb 
species and its smaller cousin, see under P. optata. P. No. 22 
makes robust and clod-forming clumps of stiff upstanding foliage 
all over the gaunt consolidated silt-beds and hard earthy shingles 
of the uppermost aretes of the Min S'an, in the same sort of places 
chosen by P. optata on Thundercrown, but growing much stouter 
and more abundant, often making quite a waving jungle of its 
stalwart stems over gaunt slopes where no other living thing 
occurs. It weeds up in sods like a groundsel, and roots in the 
same rampageous manner as P. optata, with the same long, 
pale, and chaffy pods, though I fancy it more rarely super- 
imposes a second flower-tier on the first. The flower is so far 
unknown ; judging by P. optata it should be a glorious nivalis of 
lavender-purple, and to judge by captured crowns now emerging 
from their biscuit-tins in Lanchow, it sends them up (after the 
leaves are well developed) with profusion, and grows with im- 
perturbable vigour and copiousness of clump. [Seed was barely 
mature, none the less it germinated magnificently — far better 
than P. optata, and yielded seedlings of absolutely different 
appearance.] 
Primula aerinantha No. 23 (F 273) has value as being our only 
representative of the spiked Muscarioides group. It is a most 
delightful find of Purdom's, rarely occurring on mossy slopes of 
a river-ghyll high on Lotus Mountain, with pine-trees well up 
above it on either side. I have seen it only in dry and seeding 
specimens ; it appears to me perfectly glabrous, a wonderful 
and unique promise of prosperity in a Muscarioid Primula ; 
its white-powdered stems, in capsule, are a foot or more in 
height, and it bears little bells of lavender-blue with the 
intoxicating fragrance of its group. [It is practically monocarpic 
and little to be mourned.] 
