346 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
green-leaved sprays, bowing beneath their long burden of great 
golden blossoms, will soon earn it recognition when it shows them. 
The species seems a very local one, extending from the hot downs of 
Kiai-jo away to the Tibetan Border, and up the Nan-Hor Valley 
as far as Kwanting, a plant of the drier, warmer lower region, not 
ascending into the alpine conditions of the Satanee coppice, or the 
forested folds of Thundercrown. 
Rosa sp. has no discoverable number, yet I am perfectly certain 
that abundant seed was sent, discovered, after washing, under some 
unsuspected other species. It is the most interesting, perhaps, of 
the lot — a small, scant, low shrub, not seen at all until you begin 
the ranges of the Da-Ba-S'an south of Lo-yang. Its flowers are, of 
course, not yet known, but appear to be borne singly ; its outstanding 
peculiarity lies in its fruits, which are so large that for a long time 
I took them for galls — thick-rinded amber pomegranates that they 
look, flushing with red tones, and dingy with dark stiff bristles. Their 
fleshiness, the clear pale yellow of their colour, give them the effect 
of being real edible fruits, which they by no means are ; and altogether 
their strange beauty, if they adequately repeat it in the garden, will 
promote this Rose to a high place of its own in the family. But re- 
member that nothing from Northern Szechwan must have its hardiness 
too rashly presumed in England. 
Salix sp. (F 621) may be nothing of any interest. It is a small 
grey willow of fine delicate foliage, mimicking the Olive in the 
shingle-beds of the Da-Tung Alps ; from whose boughs I combed a 
bagful of soft white fluffs in August, on the chance of their proving 
acceptable. 
Saussurea sp. (F 596) belongs to the topmost screes of the high 
alps, where nothing else can live. Its fine grey-webbed rosettes suggest 
Campanula speciosa, and then comes a stocky spike, webbed about 
in weeping networks of crystal, most strange and beautiful to see, 
though the capitules of blossom themselves are perfectly inconspicuous, 
of a dull white, adding and detracting nothing, in the lovely little 
obelisks of glistering frost -threads. 
Saxifraga sp. (F 574) I should guess to be either 5. atrata or 
S. egregia. It is the best of these regions, where Saxifrage is more 
abundantly represented than further in the South ; and is a very 
remarkable thing, with leathery rosettes recalling those of S. stellaris 
but darker and harder, sending up a loose spike of some four to six 
inches, with scattered white stars again suggesting those of S. stellaris, 
but much larger and finer, and specially conspicuous in the fat 
large ovary of darkest maroon-purple, almost black, which makes 
the most striking of contrasts with the petals. This strange plant 
abounds all over the alpine region, blossoming in July, and in the 
valleys liking cool, moist exposures in the banks, while out on the open 
alps above it flourishes everywhere in the turf. Well grown and not 
parched, it will give great pleasure. 
Senecio sp. (F 574) was this year collected in quantity sufficient 
