Botanical name: Primula vulgaris
Folk names: First rose

Type: Perennial

Wildlife: Food plant for moth caterpillars (not only helpful for moths but also hedgehogs and birds that eat caterpillars and bats that eat the moths!) Nectar for early fliers including bee flies such as the dark-edged bee-fly, sometimes long-tongued bees including queen bumblebees hungry for nectar after hibernation (especially the garden bumblebee), and if you’re really lucky, the orange-tip butterfly which is on the wing from April, and the brimstone butterfly which emerges from March. (When butterflies were more abundant, the brimstone was the main pollinator of primroses in woods, with its long tongue perfectly adapted for the job! Its foodplant is buckthorn and alder buckthorn which are very vigorous and not often found in gardens).

Flowers: February (sometimes January) and into spring.

Decorative merit: Flowers with five notched creamy yellow petals marked orange-yellow in the centre. Borne on separate stalks up to 20cm high. Sweetly scented. Two kinds: ‘pin-eyed’ with style and stigma standing like a pin above the stamens, and ‘thrum-eyed’ with stigma lying below the stamens. Low-growing basal rosette of crinkled leaves up to 12cm long, forming clumps over time. 

Where: Shade or part-sun. Along paths and front of borders, under hedging and trees and shrubs. In containers. Happy in moisture-retentive soil. Plant at least two or three together in a block to be helpful for feeding butterflies.

Folklore: The county flower of Devon and the ‘first rose of spring’, associated with Easter and a symbol of youth. Small bunches were left on the doorstep on the eve of May Day to repel witches. It was believed that children who ate primroses were given powers to see fairies. It was unlucky to bring a lone primrose into the house because it heralded a death in the family. Candied flowers were popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. 19th April is Primrose Day in honour of Benjamin Disraeli. Edible petals and leaves if not pregnant. Once so abundant they were picked in the countryside, tied into posies, wrapped in tissue paper and packed carefully in boxes by rural families. Poet John Clare: ‘Among thy woodland shady nooks, The primrose wanly comes.’ William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘…the primrose path of dalliance’.

Primrose family relative of cowslip.

Donate seeds to Exeter Seed Bank