COLLECTIONS OF 191 4. 
Ill 
irrepressible and undefeated multitudes, and is also of such 
extreme ill-temper about root-disturbance that it cannot be 
induced to survive removal or planting out if a single one of 
its scant fat roots be bruised or curtailed. With all this it is a 
species magnificently deserving of the cares it exacts ; with 
handsome foliage, not unlike that of some enormous and faintly 
glaucescent plantain, and upstanding spires of 2-3 feet, up 
which depend and dangle the remarkable flowers. These are of 
soft yellow, and have few long and wavy ray-florets, flopping 
down in a manner suggestive of a very much glorified Hamamelis, 
and full of a quite especial charm. It is so far known only from 
one marsh on Monk Mountain (where it is in poor state, and 
whence it has yielded winter seed by far too scant for distribution) 
and from another slough near Shen-trick, far away in the Drokwa 
Alps of Tibet, where it attains the splendour and goodly stature 
of its finest specimens. (Dried specimens of Purdom's exist 
in England, collected in 1911.) [Abundantly sent in 1915.] 
(?) S err alula sp. (F 432) is a handsome but quite coarse thing, common 
in open moorland fields all up the Border at low elevations, 
growing some 3-5 feet high, and expanding, in August, in a 
spreading compound head of brilliant magenta-purple fluff 
like a gigantic Ageratum. In sunny rich stretches of the wild 
garden it should make a fine effect. 
Sophora viciifolia (F 9) belongs especially to the hottest and sunniest 
dry slopes of the loess region, forming bushes of 4-6 feet, sheeted 
in May with little hanging racemes of white or palest water-blue. 
Its finest abundance was at the foot of the Feng S'an Ling, and 
the seed was collected from a hot little grave-copse behind Siku, 
where it has either been introduced or survives there alone, 
from the denudation of the now bone-bare loess downs. 
Spiraea sp. (F 457) is a gracious shrub of the arguta persuasion, with 
larger clusters along the fine-leaved arching sprays. Seed of 
this (a type, I fancy, of very many varieties) was collected on the 
upmost copse-limit of the alps on Thundercrown, and sp. F 459 
may be no different, but hails from Lotus Mountain. 
Stalice sp. (F 434) was in flower in mid-November on the sere dry 
downs approaching Lanchow. It is a low grower, and has yellow 
blossom. 
Slellera sp. (F 93) is so named at Kew, but I find no other trace of 
a pink S teller a. In any case, whether really Wikstroemia or any 
other Daphne-cousin, this charming thing may be described as 
a herbaceous woody-stocked Daphne, springing abundantly in 
all the high hayfields of the Tibetan Alps, ascending to 11,000 
feet, but no less happy in coarse dry turf on the hot and sun- 
baked foothills of Thundercrown. It springs in a mass of 
glaucous-leaved shoots to a height of 8-12 inches, forming a 
compact dome of growth and blossom, each undivided stem 
ending in June and July in a compact dome of fragrant pearl- 
