These primulas like to have wet feet and warm faces

Press, 26 September 1980, Page 8

These primulas like to have wet feet and warm faces

GARDENER’S ? DIARY

Derrick Rooney

Primulas of the auricula group — sun lovers, more or less, from the European Alps — thrive lustily in Canterbury in a normal spring, but this year .the season is ■ scarcely advanced and already they are panting with thirst. .They are flowering, but the flowers have no staying power. In their wild state these are saxatile, i.e. rock dwelling, plants, and. when their flower buds swell and open their cool crevices are saturated with snowmelt.

■ They need sun on their heads in summer to ripen the stems and set flower buds, and without at least a semblance of a summer dry spell they will not flower. But regardless of what has gone before, they give their best performance in a sodden spring.

Primula marginata, in its various colour forms and hybrids, is the leading light in this family of alpine primroses. All the forms have attractive, mealy leaves and bright flowers characterised by a contrasting, mealy white eye.- ; - : “Linda Pope,” is the variety that every collector wants, but the lady seems to be unattainable, at least in this country. Of .all primulas this one most closely approaches true blue; the flowers have a mealy white eye. . The variety that always comes in its place (to me, at least) has the shocking white eye, but tho "bluej rim has a dash of lilac/yl;

it. I believe it to be the variety “Coerulea.” “Rufus” and “Marven” are hybrids that come under the marginata umbrella. “Marven” has more than a. dash of half-breed-ing, being a back-cross to P.'marginata from a hybrid chain that has a marginata forebear somewhere. The growth is not very vigorous and the flowers are not very big, but they are a rich, plummy n urple. Buds are visible in the rosettes this year, but they are not developing, and if the nor’west spell .-lasts much longer they may /well suffer a spontaneous abortion.

“Rufus” flowered out of season in early winter, and is not going to perform again until next year, alas. It is the closest approach in this group to tomato red, but is toned down by a dash of purple. Primula “pubescens” is the collective name for another group of aristocratic auriculas, and as so often happens the name is

superficially contradictory —■ whereas all the marginata varieties have leaves dusted with farina, those in the pubescens group have seemingly smooth leaves; you need a lens to see the down.

Primula pubsescens is not a species but a hybrid swarm that .includes not just primary hybrids, but secondary and tertiary

ones, too. Primula auricula itself (which is no harder to grow than the common primrose) is usually somewhere in the background, and as a result most of' the pubescens hybrids are fairly easy to manage, in theory if not always in practice.

“Generosity” . is my favourite; tiny white-eyed flowers ■ appear numer-

ously in bunches all round the rosettes. They are vivid reddish purple. “Faldonside” is another good one, just as free flowering but more plummy. I like also Primula viscosa, one of the parents of this group. It opened its first flowers on my rock garden this week. . “Viscosa” means sticky, and some forms of this very

widely distributed species are very tacky'.to;- the touch, but you would hardly notice any--sticki-ness at all about the leaves of the form grown in New Zealand.

The coarsely ..toothed leaves key it i into the species, . though. The flowers also have frilly edges, and come in dense, mop-shaped clusters on short, thick stems. They are pretty close'to pink, which is a fost desirable colour in this group of primulas. Also- attractive. also flowering now, but more after the style of the English primrose is. Primula altaica, which in. truth is no more than the Byzantine and Levantine form of the common, primrose. It is the rare possessor of flowers of a “true” mauve — very much a cool charmer.

Primula experts tend to look down on this one from the rarefied heights of their noses because it is a commoner, but to mere mortals it is one of the loveliest of . all primulas: as well as one of the easiest to grow.

If only its double form, Lilacina Plena or “Quaker’s Bonnet” were as easy.' But it comes, and goes, and seldom seems to last more than a year in one place. Unless I find a few flowers peeping- out of the undergrowth ■ somewhere in the next few days I will have to assume that for the present it has gone. Its progenitor most often goes under the name "altaica” these days, but ■in the past it has had as many synonyms as a dog has fleas — sibthorpii, rubra, amoena, lilacina, purpurea and atropurpurea are some of them; the last two are mysterious, because there is not a hint of purple in the flowers.

This hot, dry spring has the alpine primulas in our diarist’s H or or ata garden “panting with thirst”