Primrose

low herbs with showy, salver-form flowers clustered on scapes. Some thirty species, with a wide range of color, are cultivated as house plants. They are chiefly of alpine origin,-from mountain meadows. There is no relationship to the rose. The common primrose of England is a hedge and meadow plant with tufted leaves and pale yellow flowers. Lord Beaconsfield adopted the primrose as the flower of his party and the Tory ladies wore primroses in their hats. Beaumont and Fletcher call the primrose "Merry springtime's harbinger." Milton, in Lycidas, speaks of the "rathe (early) primrose that forsaken dies." "Soft silken primrose," says Shakespeare. "Sweet as the primrose," says Goldsmith. Wordsworth expresses the limit of indifference to things beautiful in his oft quoted lines:

The bird's-eye primrose is a pretty plant with silvery leaves in small rosettes. The flower-stalks are three to twelve inches high and bear compact umbels of lilac-purple yellow-eyed flowers. See Cowslip