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Stewart Robert Hinsley · 01-05-2012, 09:29 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

In message , writes

When we moved into this house in 1978, there were some primulas
that I took to be horticultural polyanthus, though with nearly
cowslip-shaped flowers. The leaves were right, the umbels were
generally multilateral, and the colours were yellow or dark red
(especially yellow in the centre and dark red elsewhere).

Recently, they have got a bit annoying, so I have moved the
survivors to our naturalised bulb area, but the bizarre thing
is that half of them now fit my books' descriptions of cowslips,
with yellow flowers with well-defined orange markings, one-sided
umbels and leaves truncated at the base. I am too rusty and old
to be sure whether they are appropriately scented.

My books and a Web searches leave me totally baffled as to what
horticultural polyanthus are botanically, and Wikipedia has a
picture of red cowslips that match what I have in appearance.
So have they bred themselves back to close to P. veris?

As Archie said of Mehitabel's kits, Boss, can such things be?

Did you mean SRH?

The BSBI use Primula x polyantha for polyanthus in general. Richards'
monograph on Primula (1993 edn) has Primula x tommasinii for Primula
veris x vulgaris, and Primula x pruhoniciana for Primula juliiae x
tommasinii. Primula elatior may also be involved in some clones.

So, polyanthus are hybrids between primroses and cowslips, with the
possible involvement of other species in some cases. Richards attributes
red cowslips to introgression from red-flowered subspecies of primrose.

I find breeding themselves back towards P. veris plausible.

An alternative is the P. veris introduced itself, and then outcompeted
the originals.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley