Look very closely at a colony of plants in full bloom and you'll also see what so fascinated the plant scientist and botanist Charles Darwin. ![]() Human foragers aside, these luminous spring flowers are appreciated by early-foraging bees, moths and other pollinating insects. The plant’s gently puckered, tongue-shaped leaves are also edible and can be used either raw in a salad or added to a soup, although harvesting these in any quantity is not something I’d recommend if you want your primroses to flourish. Painted with the lightest slick of egg-white and then covered with a dusting of caster sugar, crystallised primrose flowers can be used as the prettiest of decorations on cakes, desserts and puddings. Not only are their dainty spring blooms hugely decorative, they are also edible. ![]() In a garden setting, primroses will also happily grow beneath the skirts of deciduous trees and shrubs or along the side of a hedge, but where space is tight you could grow these ultra-compact perennials in a shady window-box combined with violas, hellebores, dwarf narcissi and crocuses for a pretty, seasonal display. It is often found growing along damp ditches, grassy roadsides and shady hedgerows where it will generously self-seed over time to gradually form large colonies, especially on heavier, moisture-retentive but well-drained, neutral or mildly acidic soils. Widespread throughout Ireland, few plants are as unassumingly charming as this hardy, spring-blooming, native perennial wildflower. Speckled along the edges of a steep, damp bank that sits beneath the dappled shade of beech trees, their blooms glimmering like gold coins in a fountain, it was a joy-inducing sight that stopped me in my tracks and had me stooping low to touch those luminous, lemon-yellow flowers and inhale their sweet, clean perfume. I spotted the first flush of wild primroses flowering in nearby woods a few weeks ago.
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