Primula bulleyana
Sunny, orangey yellow flowers held atop and around a stem, fill the Wild Garden at Wisley when this candlebra primula blooms in profusion. This award-winning woodland plant is great for late spring and early summer colour.
Vital statistics
- Common name
- Bulley's primrose
- Family
- Primulaceae
- Height & spread
- 60cm (2ft) x 60cm (2ft)
- Form
- Semi-evergreen perennial
- Soil
- Moist, humus-rich, neutral to acid soil
- Aspect
- Shade to partial shade
- Hardiness
- Hardy throughout the British Isles
Primula
There are around 400 species of Primula worldwide, and many more hybrids. They are mainly perennial, alpine herbaceous plants with short rhizomes and leaves in basal rosettes, found mostly in northern temperate zones with over half the species originating in the Himalayas.
Primulas are found in a range of habitats from damp, grassy banks and riversides to the wet, stony screes of high mountains.
Primula is divided into many different botanical sections with three major groupings recognised in gardens: auricula primulas; candelabra primulas; and primrose-polyanthus primulas.
Auricula primulas, much loved by the Victorians, were developed from hybrids of P. auricula and P. hirsuta. They are evergreen primulas which bear umbels of several large, flat-faced flowers of varying colours, often with the colour of the flower centres in sharp contrast to that of the petals.
Candelabra primulas take their name from the fact that the flowers on the plants in this group are not arranged in the usual umbel but in whorls set at intervals up an otherwise bare stem. The general effect is like a candelabrum.
Primrose-polyanthus primulas are a very diverse group of winter or spring flowering primulas with colourful flowers either borne singularly, clustered in a basal rosette, or on long, stalked umbels. This group contains the English primrose, Primula vulgaris, which can be found blooming in early spring along hedgerows and stream sides throughout Great Britain.
Primula bulleyana
From the hillsides of the Himalayas this rosette-forming semi-evergreen candelabra primula produces stout stems with 5-7 whorls of five or more flowers in late spring and early summer. They are crimson in bud but open to an orangey-yellow and look wonderful in a damp, woodland setting.
Cultivation
- Grow in deep moist or moist but well-drained neutral to acid, humus-rich soil in partial shade.
- May be attacked by aphids, vine weevil, slugs, leaf and bud eelworms and glasshouse red spider mite.
Propagation
- Propagate by division in autumn or early spring.
- Propagate by seed sown from autumn to spring.
AGM
The RHS Herbaceous Plant Committee awarded Primula bulleyana an Award of Garden Merit and described it as a:
'Semi-evergreen perennial to 60cm, with rosettes of obovate leaves and erect stems bearing 5-7 whorls of orange-yellow flowers 2cm across.'