Friday, February 17, 2006
Primula rosea
It is no secret on this blog that my first gardening love is small woodland plants. One of the best of these is Primula rosea, a diminutive primrose native to the Himalayas, so it likes a moist, cool, shady, but well-drained spot in the garden (the shady part is about all it gets around here, but after its initial astonishment at the predicament it now finds itself in, the plant has settled in). It blooms very early, the picture above being taken last April 6th. It actually begins blooming even before the leaves fully emerge, which you can kind of appreciate in the picture above. As soon as the weather turns hot, its flowers begin to decline, but with luck it is in bloom for a month. The picture below, taken two weeks later, shows the small, clumping leaves, with the flowers already starting to fade. Its flowers are pristine, as if made of crystal, and a hot pink, which is very striking when it begins its bloom arising from a still essentially bare spot of ground.// posted by IBOY @ 7:51 AM 
