A detailed study, covering 20 years in the life of a Primrose population, sheds inter? esting light on this familiar wild plant.
Primroses Primula vulgaris are an emblem of spring in the countryside. Perhaps the most popular and widely recognised of all Britain’s wild plants, they have featured in personal and traditional customs throughout Britain (Mabey 1996), have been recited by poets down the ages and, through the Primrose League, came to symbolise the Victorian values of the Conservative Party. They even fascinated Charles Darwin, who in 1861 studied their two main flower forms, the long-styled, short-anthered ‘pins’ and the short-styled, prominent-anthered ‘thrums’.