HARDY HERBACEOUS PLANTS 107 



shifted into beds and borders in autumn, when the herbaceous and 

 annual plants are fading, and moved out again in the spring, when 

 other plants are coming on. The seasons are reversed ; instead of 

 Primroses and Polyanthuses growing in summer and resting in 

 winter, they grow in winter and pursue a calm, easy, though not quite 

 stagnant, existence in summer. In view of the great paucity of 

 winter-blooming hardy plants, it seems astonishing that a plant which 

 is as hardy as a hazel, blooms off and on the whole winter through, 

 and flowers gloriously throughout the spring, should not be grown 

 in every garden ; but the fact is that most people associate the 

 Primrose with the yellow wilding of the woodlands, and have no 

 idea that garden forms of great size, and with a wide range of 

 beautiful colours, exist. When they do awaken to the truth 

 Primroses will be as much in demand as Arabises and Forget- 

 me-nots, both of which they greatly excel in variety and value. 



The coloured Primroses have been immensely improved in 

 recent years. We have larger flowers and more colours. We 

 have cream, pale and deep yellow, pink, rose, lilac, carmine, 

 crimson, and blue. We have, too, double as well as single 

 flowers. Only a botanical eye can see in these lovely flowers a 

 close relationship with the " rathe Primrose," and the lines of the 

 poet 



"Welcome, pale Primrose, starting up between 

 Dead matted leaves of ash and oak, that strew 

 The lawn, the wood, and the spinney through, 

 Mid creeping moss, and Ivy's darker green," 



seem hardly appropriate to the brilliant garden flower, however 

 admirable in relation to the " Primrose of the river's brim." 



Every Primrose flower has its own separate stalk ; not so 

 every Polyanthus. In the latter we find that the flower stalk 

 subdivides, as it were, forming a cluster of short stems or pedicels, 

 each of which is surmounted by a flower. Thus, when we have 

 Primroses and Polyanthuses growing together and they are almost 



