Primrose

Overview

The primrose opens before almost anything else in the year, finding gaps in the January cold, spreading across road banks and woodland edges in pale yellow drifts that feel provisional and then, weeks later, still present. It is the plant the year uses to announce itself, which is why it carries so much superstition about first sightings and lucky numbers and the arrangements of flowers brought into the house. A single primrose is very bad luck in many English county traditions. The correct number varies by county. The principle is consistent: with the primrose, what you do at the beginning sets the terms for everything that follows.

Botanical Notes

A stemless perennial with a basal rosette of obovate, crinkled, softly hairy leaves 5–25cm. Flowers solitary on slender hairy stalks, pale yellow with a darker yellow eye, five notched petals, slightly fragrant, from December to May. Dimorphic: pin-eyed flowers (long style, anthers low) and thrum-eyed flowers (short style, anthers high) occur on separate plants, an arrangement that promotes cross-pollination. Native to western and central Europe; common in hedgebanks, open woodland, and old grassland. Closely related to the cowslip (*P. veris*) and oxlip (*P. elatior*); hybridises freely with both. Contact allergen primin present in glandular hairs of leaves; more concentrated in the cowslip.

Lore & History

Primroses were scattered on graves in some parts of England and Ireland — a first flower for the first crossing — and this funerary association shadows the more common associations with spring and luck. In Ireland, primrose balls hung outside on May Eve were said to protect butter from being stolen by fairies; the same flowers placed on the doorstep on the first of May served as a welcome to good spirits and a deterrent to bad ones. Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria's favourite Prime Minister, was famously devoted to the primrose; a political organisation founded in his memory was called the Primrose League, and on the anniversary of his death in April, Conservatives traditionally wore primroses in his honour. The flower appears in many country names for Easter week. In the Victorian language of flowers it meant early youth — a compliment and a warning simultaneously.

Warnings