CHAPTER VI 



THE COMMON PRIMROSE (Pyimula vulgaris) 



A SUNNY bank bespangled with primroses is 

 irresistible to the country rambler. The sweet- 

 scented, pale-yellow flowers are so attractive that 

 to gather a bunch of them follows almost as a 

 natural consequence. But the part they play in 

 this appeal to our lighter human interest often 

 obscures from us certain deep-laid schemes in their 

 economy by means of which they have become 

 possessed of nearly the whole bank, carpeting its 

 surface with their green, crinkled leaves and 

 establishing their colony in every vacant spot 

 favoured by the sunlight. In the haste of 

 gathering their flowers we fail to notice that every 

 little detail of their structure — whether of leaf, 

 or flower, or underground stem and root — has its 

 meaning and purpose in the order of their evolu- 

 tion. 



The primrose occasionally favours the open 

 woods, but it revels most in a sunny bank. 

 There it has every facility for carrying out those 

 hereditary tactics which its remote ancestors have 

 found good for their race. Early in the spring its 

 green leaves warily peep up above the surface of 

 the soil, but they do not then look hke primrose 

 leaves. They stand erect, each little leaf like a 



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