To start, two pictures illustrating how my camera alters colours. The first is the original photograph. The second I have adjusted to get closer to the flowers’ actual colour. This is a plant I grew from Barnhaven seed.
Another from the Barnhaven border mix.
This yellow auricula is from a garden centre.
This very small primula was sold to me as an auricula by a man who had dug a lot of plants out of his yard and brought them to a farmers market. He said the flowers were yellow but the sun had faded them. OK. I call it Small White Auricula (SWA). It no doubt has some P auricula in it. I think it may also have some P marginata, as plants I’ve grown from its seeds, even when the other parent is yellow-flowered, have pink and/or purple flowers, as seen in the next picture. But it must also have something in its lineage smaller than a P marginata (P allionii?), because this is a very, very small primula.
(Below: one of the surprisingly bright red-pink offspring of SWA, above, and the pale yellow border auricula above it.)
Now two more pictures of the species auricula. Click to enlarge. Seriously. If I could keep only one auricula, this would be it, for the true, clear yellow and the lemon-cake scent. The third picture is a new yellow seedling from Devonian Botanic Garden seed and looks like it may have come from the same parent. The blue flowers in the foreground are P marginata ‘Herb Dickson.’
Two tiers of auriculas, looking good displayed in a group.
Auriculas and mini daffodils in evening light.
These next four are from seed I bought from a specialist auricula grower from show-quality plants he had raised and crossed. The yellow stripe (‘Night & Day’ x ‘Blossom Dearie’) looked like it was going to be a throwaway when the first two flowers opened badly misshapen. But the third (lower right) is fine, and with luck, future flowerings will be, too. The second (‘Bakerloo Line’ x Marble Arch’) is a very nice wire-edge red. The third (‘Trafalgar Square’ x ‘Bold Tartan’) has appeared already in a previous post. Now it has three flowers open, and, as with the yellow stripe, the third flower is the best. It lacks the pale yellow edge that is prominent in the first flower. And the fourth plant (unnamed purple/white stripe seedling x ‘Border Beauty’) was a disappointment when its first flower had almost no colour to it, but all of its flowers have aged a nice grey-pink (paler than shown) — I’ll keep it.
Now, two named plants that I bought mail-order in 2010, blooming for me for the first time, ‘Silverway’ and ‘Arundel Stripe.’
Finally, two oddities from my own garden auricula seed. The first is an unusual butterscotch colour, and the second is pale yellow with brown vein-like stripes — more impressive in the flesh than in the photograph.
Primrose Fields 