Abstract
THE very word awakens the pleasantest memories A that remain to us from the time when we almost lived in the open air and enjbyed the intense delight of plucking wild flowers without let or hindrance; a pure and unalloyed delight actually experienced only in childhood, though it lives evergreen in our hearts, and leavens the more serious pleasures of riper years. The primrose of primroses for all Britons is the wild yellow primrose that adorns woods, hedgerows, and banks from Cornwall and Sussex to the Shetlands, Orkneys, and Hebrides; for none is more lovely, though many among the endless variety spread over the north temperate and cold regions excel it in warmth and brilliancy of colouring. It is now about a year since botanists and gardeners met at South Kensington, whither they had brought their collections of living plants, comprising a large number of species and varieties of Primula, solely for the purpose of seeing and talking about primroses, polyanthuses, and auriculas; and the vast amount of information contained in the report of the proceedings of those assembled merits the attention of all naturalists, to say nothing of those who love flowers merely for the pleasure they afford the eye. Being hardy, primroses were among the first plants cultivated in this country when ornamental flower-gardening began, little more than three centuries ago. The old masters—Turner, Gerard, and Parkinson—introduce us to them, the first including in his “Libellus” only the prymerose; but at that date (1538) there seems to have been no such thing in England as the cultivation of flowers for their beauty alone. Gerard's first catalogue of plants cultivated in his garden at Holborn, and published in 1596, contains “primroses, birds eies, paigles, cowslips, and beares eares”: respectively Primula vulgaris, P.farinosa, P. veris, and P. auricula; and this is the earliest English catalogue of professedly cultivated flowers. Parkinson describes in his “Paradisus”(1629) twenty-one sorts of “beares eares”or auriculas, and he mentions that the varieties cultivated were much more numerous than he intended describing. In the report alluded to, Shirley Hibberd states that in the year 1570 many artisans, driven from the Netherlands, settled in this country, bringing with them their favourite flowers, including the best of their auriculas. Thus it would appear that the auricula was one of the very earliest “florists' flowers”cultivated in this country; and it is hardly necessary to say that it is one of the chief favourites of the present day. One of the questions discussed at the Conference was the parentage of the true auriculas and the Alpine auriculas, a question upon which florists and botanists did not quite agree; and the only way of obtaining a solution of the problem is by experiment. It is nearly certain, however, that more than one species has been concerned in the production of the various cultivated races. On the one side it has been argued that the presence of true blue is almost absolute proof that they cannot all have descended from a species having yellow flowers; and it is true that both wild and cultivated plants which exhibit great variety in the colour of their flowers rarely offer both pure blue and pure red. The china-aster (Callistephus chinensis) is an exception, but whether both colours exist in the wild plant I cannot ascertain. Philip Miller, who was the first to cultivate it in this country, states that he received seeds from France of the red and white varieties in 1731 and of a blue in 1736. Amongst our native plants a very large number of those having normally blue or red flowers frequently produce white varieties; and I have myself picked red as well as white varieties of the bluebell (Scilia nutans), though it is true the red was not a very pure one. On the other hand, normally yellow flowers rarely sport into other colours.
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HEMSLEY, W. Primroses . Nature 35, 561–562 (1887). https://doi.org/10.1038/035561a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/035561a0