Primula Verticillata

Beautiful, jagged-edged grey leaves are thickly dusted with farina, which also coats the flower stems, each carrying whorls of bright yellow flowers. This spectacular and rarely-encountered beauty can be grown in a dry, protected spot outdoors, but it truly does make an amazing spectacle indoors or in an alpine house, where it can stand considerable heat and drying, even on a hot window sill as in the illustration here. It can be very thirsty, but it rewards constant drinks, and occasional feeding with an endless display of fragrant flowers as it blooms on and off for much of the year apart from mid-winter! In the wild the Sphondylia section of primulas come from surprisingly hot places, like Saudia Arabia, Yemen, the Sinai peninsula and Ethiopia, where they inhabit shady, damp places and often grow on wet, north facing, limestone cliffs. Botanically, they are related to, and indeed the flowers bear some resemblance, to the beautiful, and much harder-to-grow Dionysia species. Old plants can grow to a very large size and reward being re-potted yearly.