PRIMROSE FLOWERS : 

 A STUDY OF PIN-CENTRES AND ROSE-CENTRES. 



BY E. I>. MARC^IAXI), A.L.8. 



There are few localities in England where Primroses grow 

 in greater profusion than in the island of Guernsey. The 

 soil and the air seem to be particularly favourable for their 

 development, so that they blossom in rich luxuriance on every 

 hedgebank and streamside, as well as on the steep slopes of 

 the cliffs — in fact, almost everywhere. Many slight variations 

 from the normal form may be noticed by an observant eye, 

 such as the one with milk-white flowers, or the rarer one in 

 which they are delicately suffused with a ruddy or piukish 

 glow. Occasionally the corolla, instead of being five-lobed 

 as usual, is divided into four segments, rarely into only three, 

 or it may possess more than the normal number of divisions, 

 and bear six, seven, or eight lobes, peihaps even more, so that 

 at times a flower 0(!curs which may be described as a semi- 

 double Primrose. Then again there is the caulescent or 

 stemmed variety, often mistaken for the Oxlip, in which a 

 number of flowers grow in an umbel upon a common footstalk, 

 after the fashion of a Cowslip. 



All these deviations from the common type are suffi- 

 ciently marked to be noticeable by any moderately sharp 

 observer as he w^alks along ; but there is a far more common 

 variation in the flowers of the Primrose which can only be 

 detected on closer inspection. If you examine a handful of 

 primroses gathered anywhere at random, you will perceive 

 that the Howers are not all exactly alike in the centre, but 

 present two distinct and well-marked forms. In one kind the 

 tube of the ccn'olla is closed at the throat by a little tuft of 

 delicately-tinted pinkish scales, whilst in the other kind there 

 projects from the throat a tiny green stem surmounted by a 

 globular head, like the head of a pin. The ce»^tral tuft of 

 scales in the former case consists of the stamens which are 

 clustered together into a little rosette, so it is convenient to 

 term such flowers rose-con fres^. In the other case the little 



