COLLECTIONS OF 19I4. 
the plant to be immediately distributed, as only a few pods were 
still full, on the low branching shrublet of perhaps a foot high 
and twice as much across. No doubt, more fully developed, it 
will grow much larger ; I feel lucky to have got any seed, for 
throughout South Kansu this (or these) rock-Lilacs are usually 
inaccessible in proportion to their brilliancy. 
Tilia sp. (F 393) (? T. mongolica) is a low tree of some 15-20 feet, 
very abundant in flower and fruit, but not, so far, of any specially 
eclatant beauty, which is common in the lower alpine coppice 
and woodland of the Satanee range. 
Viburnum fragrans (F 13). — This most glorious of shrubs we found 
for the first time as a wild plant, occurring, not abundantly, 
in scant coppice, and in little grassy bays down beside the fell- 
becks in the small hill-range between Shi-ho and Shi-ja-juang, at 
about 5,000-6,000 feet, on April 16. The flower was here passing 
over, but still lingered in the small wayside villages, enabling 
us fully to realize the glory of its capacious thyrses of blossom, 
like snow-white or rose-pink Lilac, so freely borne on the grace- 
ful, stately boughs and sprays of 6-10 feet, and exhaling the 
most entrancing scent of heliotrope. This first-class beauty, 
wild only here (so far as known), is a general culture-plant all 
over Northern China ; great old specimens are seen in almost 
every palace- or temple-yard, in Minchow, J6-ni, Lanchow, &c. ; 
and its loveliness and fragrance even carried it to Peking, where 
it was among the most prized specimens in the Imperial garden, 
until the death of the Grand Dowager and the fall of the, dynasty 
allowed it out at last into the eager hands of commoner 
cultivators. The flower is prepared in tight buds at the end of 
each spur and spray by December ; it opens in April, and is then 
succeeded by the foliage, amid which in August hang clusters 
of glowing oblong berries of crimson scarlet, hardly less beautiful 
in their way than the blossom, as well as offering a favourite 
dish for dessert (but you must spit out the poisonous cloven 
stone). In fact, we should have got yet more seed than our 
present abundant supply, had it not been for a falling-out with 
the Prince of J6-ni, who, to avenge himself, set to and sedulously 
ate up all the Viburnum fruits in his palace garden, and threw 
away the seed. At every stage V. fragrans takes the very highest 
rank ; it will evidently like full sun, the better to ripen its 
wood ; but, from its happiness in cool Tibet, I believe it will hand- 
somely escape the tiresomeness that mars Chintonanthus, and will 
undoubtedly prove as precious and priceless for spring forcing 
as for the open garden a month or two later — where it seems 
likely to thrive in any rich and open loam, in China having 
often to put up with the most adamantine and caky loess, into 
which it is rammed at haphazard, and there proceeds to prosper 
profusely. [It goes far up North, even into the cold foothills cf 
the Da-Tung Alps, where not even corn will ripen. 1915.] 
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