PRIMROSE 67 



Woodruff was used in Chaucer's day, but had no real curative 

 properties. It was also employed to flavour wine and as a perfume 

 for clothes. It was used for the liver and bile, epilepsy and palsy. It 

 is very acidic. 



ESSENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: 



143. Asperula odorata, L. Stem erect, upper leaves 6-9, in 

 whorl, lower whorls of 2-6 leaves, lanceolate, margins ciliate, flowers 

 white, in terminal panicle, stalked, fruit with rough bristles. 



Primrose (Primula vulgaris, Huds.) 



A general favourite, common and widespread, its universal popu- 

 larity bids fair to cause its entire disappearance from some districts, 

 thanks to hawkers. It may be an ancient plant, but only its present 

 distribution is known, which is throughout the Northern Temperate 

 Zone, in Europe, except the north-east, and N. Africa. In Great 

 Britain it is found in all parts except Peebles, and it grows at a height 

 of 1600 ft. in Yorkshire. 



The Primrose now much less widespread, as noted, than formerly, 

 thanks also to the vandalism of the collector, the thoughtlessness of 

 the householder is or was a common plant which formerly adorned 

 the glades in the woods, the meadows surrounding them, and the leafy 

 lanes and banks of many secluded districts, especially in the south and 

 west districts of England, where the climate is mild and moist. But 

 in some of these spots it is now extinct. 



Everyone knows the Primrose. It has no stem, except the flower- 

 ing stalk or scape. The leaves are all radical leaves. The Primrose 

 has the rosette habit. The rootstock is stout. The leaves are more 

 or less without a stalk (as are the umbels), inversely egg-shaped, 

 spoon-shaped, or oblong, tapering downwards, softly hairy below, 

 wrinkled, scalloped. The young leaves are rough, netted. 



The flowers are pale yellow, rarely pale lilac or purplish, drying 

 green, in an umbel which is stalkless, so that the flower-stalks look like 

 scapes as long as the leaves. The bracts are linear. The flowers are 

 spreading or more or less erect. The radical flower-stalks are softly 

 hairy, and bear one flower only. The limb of the corolla is flat, with 

 a ring of scale-like folds at the mouth, which is narrow. The corolla 

 lobes are rounded, notched. The calyx is softly hairy, slightly inflated, 

 tubular, 5-angled, the teeth awl-like to lance-shaped, acute, long-pointed. 

 The capsule is as long, or half as long, as the calyx, egg-shaped, the 

 long, straight teeth of the fruiting calyx meeting above on prostrate 



