Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Specific Families and Genera => Primula => Topic started by: Rodger Whitlock on March 31, 2009, 11:06:52 PM
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Here in Victoria, BC, we have Primula juliae from three distinct sources: a nursery in Seattle, a nursery in Fruitvale, BC who got their stock from an old lady in Rossland, BC, and a nursery in Ontario.
All three are thrums, and the two I have (Seattle and Rossland) are visually indistinguishable. It may be that all are the same clone.
Is anyone anywhere growing pin-eyed P. juliae? Or are all the plants of it in cultivation thrums? Seed seems to be non-existent, and to produce viable seed, it would be advantageous to cross pins and thrums as pin-pin and thrum-thrum crosses are notoriously infertile.
Footnote: The eponymous Julia was the daughter of the gentleman after whom Paeonia mlokosewitschii was named.
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Dear Rodger,
There is a commercial source of Primula juliae seed in the UK:
http://www.seeds-by-size.co.uk/
Don't be put off by the website (which looks a bit basic), I have ordered seed from here many times without problem.
You can pay using paypal.
I have plants of P.juliae but can't remember if they are pins or thrums.
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This page is interesting..... http://www.alaskaprimroses.org/articles/PrimulaJuliae.htm
Luit posted a hybrid of this type in the Primula March pages...here...
http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3160.msg84599#msg84599 you will see that it is a pin. Not a pure P. juliae, of course, but a close approximation! :D
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This page is interesting..... http://www.alaskaprimroses.org/articles/PrimulaJuliae.htm
Luit posted a hybrid of this type in the Primula March pages...here...
http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3160.msg84599#msg84599 you will see that it is a pin. Not a pure P. juliae, of course, but a close approximation!
Yes, it's pretty close, but the blue color is a giveaway. The flower stems appear longer than in pure P. juliae, perhaps due to ancestry, perhaps due to being grown in a greenhouse with insufficient light. And yes, it is most definitely and emphatically a pin! I've never seen a primrose with such protruding stigmas before!
Mary Kordes article is interesting, but she fails to mention perhaps the most famous group of P. × pruhoniciana cultivars, Ahrends' "Schnee" series. Sadly, most of those appear to be out of commerce, but the two I have ('Schneesturm' and 'Schneetreiben') are real charmers, combining the dwarf, small-flowered character of P. juliae with pretty cream-colored flowers. They differ only slightly in growth habit and flowering season. Both are pin-eyed.
To my eyes, one of the great attractions of P. juliae is its small flowers, a welcome change from the overblown hybrid primroses so common today. Plants with very small flowers are rather difficult to use well in the garden, but if you work toward sheets of them, the result is beyond beautiful. Primula juliae is one such plant; Anemone caucasica and Acis autumnalis others. There's work for the hybridizers there, creating plants that retain the dwarf stature and small flowers of P. juliae, but with a greatly expanded color range and sufficient vigor to spread well.
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The illustration in Mary Kordes' article is badly misleading as it appears that it is meant to be P. juliae when in fact, it seems to be one of the Cowichan primroses. The primrose in Luit's picture are similar to some of the x Juliana (or x Pruhonoica) hybrids but they too, bear little resemblance to their parent, true P. juliae which is a creeping plant, just a very few centimetres in height and with quite small, rosy-purple flowers, nowhere near blue.
[attachthumb=1]
This is the foliage of P. juliae but I have no image in flower at present. I'll try for one in the spring.
In NZ at present there is a plant doing the rounds as P. 'Mina,' named for the elderly lady from whose garden it came. However, it is, in fact, just P. juliae, no different in any way from the species. Someone said it is a smaller-growing plant but not so. I would suggest that in Mina's garden it was growing in less than ideal conditions. In other gardens, it grows exactly the same as P. juiliae.
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you will see that it is a pin. Not a pure P. juliae, of course, but a close approximation! :D
True Primula juliae is a totally different plant comparing to P. Hall Barn Blue.
The plant I saw here has different leaves, comparing with the most P. x pruhoniciana Hybr. I know.
Therefore I asked if anybody knows more about parentage, because I think some other parent is involved.
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This is true P. juliae. Lesley's picture of leaves is true to. Plant in the article is a hybrid.
(http://olga_bond.users.photofile.ru/photo/olga_bond/1199602/xlarge/30293146.jpg)
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YES! :)
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This is Primula juliae which I bought fro Aberconway nursery last year. The flowers appear to be pin.
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So worthwhile looking for seed then. Was it Barnhaven who listed it by the packet?
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No, Lesley, it was 'Seeds by Size'
http://www.seeds-by-size.co.uk/
I sent some left over P.juliae (obtained from this source) to a fellow forumist, and they reported it had germinated ok.
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Oh yes, I remember now. It's probably too late for this year but I'll make a note) to order some next year.
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No, Lesley, it was 'Seeds by Size'
http://www.seeds-by-size.co.uk/
I sent some left over P.juliae (obtained from this source) to a fellow forumist, and they reported it had germinated ok.
Today's "can you tell what it is yet" contest
These are some of the seed Giles gave me, sown on 20th. Feb. 2009. I've always avoided "Seeds by Size", these have made me reconsider.
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Mmmmmm...they look very vigorous for such a small species. But that is probably just spring growth and they'll "compact" as they age. I do hope they're true and not just a x Juliana type of hybrid. Perhaps you won't know until they flower.
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I should have said, they're in a 2" (5cm) pot.
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The plants grown from the 'P. juliae' seed from 'Seeds by Size' that Giles gave me are flowering at the moment. All I'm saying is these are what the seed turned into, given my form they're probably not even primulas. Of the three with flowers today there is variation from pink to purple, the one in the photo is in the middle of the range.
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Interesting that your babies are flowering now, David, I noticed some juliae types just that colour flowering in an old established clump in a nearby garden earlier this week.
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The plants grown from the 'P. juliae' seed from 'Seeds by Size' that Giles gave me are flowering at the moment. All I'm saying is these are what the seed turned into, given my form they're probably not even primulas. Of the three with flowers today there is variation from pink to purple, the one in the photo is in the middle of the range.
They could very well be Primula juliae. It has a very small flower, and that thumb offers a good standard by which to measure these.
Of more interest, the range of color you have.
Regrettably, when I tried to order P. juliae seed from "Seeds by Size", after a very long time, the reply came back that their supplier could or would not supply the small quantity I wanted. Game over.
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No! No! No! They are NOT P. juliae, but what commercial growers are now CALLING juliae but by which they mean something of the general type of Wanda and the like. They are small, making little rosettes of flowers usually in a central bunch and in various colours and shades. I daresay they suit many people for a colourful display but THEY ARE NOT PRIMULA JULIAE and if anyone yet again tries to palm these off on me as P. juliae I shall tear my hair out. So thanks for the warning David as I was about to order some. I do have a single plant of P. juliae, in flower at the moment and shall photograph it tomorrow.
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No! No! No! They are NOT P. juliae
I hoped you'd say that... primroses that look like the ones in my photo are common in my experience, perhaps hybrids that may have some p.juliae in their backgrounds.
It's interesting how names matter in gardening.
Picking up Maggi's comment, there's a row of 'arctic' ™ and 'harbinger' (of Winter) primroses flowering just out of the above photo, so not well placed for collecting pure seed.
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The real question (at least within 10 meters of my estimable self, the rest of the universe can go hang) is whether anyone has both pin- and thrum-eyed plants of the authentic P. juliae. Both of mine are iirc pins (but my memory may be wrong-o), and I suspect they are the same clone.
The real P. juliae is one of those plants that seem to be fading out of cultivation because they are chiefly propagated vegetatively and are gradually weakening as the viral titer builds up.
Has anyone ever asked the Tbilisi Botanic Garden for seed of this and other Caucasian rarities?
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Maybe some of our Eastern European Forum members could think about this?
I can't photograph mine at present. We're having more snow!
This is an old pic of the foliage alone and it is nothing at all like that in David's picture. Will try and do the whole plant tomorrow.
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Interesting picture Lesley.
In Richards Primula book it says that P. Juliae has flowers that emerge laterally rather from the centre of the rosette and that it creeps rather than forming rosettes. He also comments that it is naturalised around a reservoir near Glasgow.
The photos at:
http://www.primulaworld.com/PWweb/gallery/juliae.html
confirm that. As does the photo from Olga at the start of this thread.
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Lesley,
Definitely different to what we have here as juliae as well. Obviously ours are hybrids. I rather like the true species. Nice appearance, judging from the pics.
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Here is my P. juliae in bloom (sparsely, and damaged by this week's snow and rain). Olga's on the first page is a super plant and just as it should look when grown well. As David mentions, Richards mentions the creeping rather than rosette forming habit, and unlike say P. warshenewsiana which creeps about beflow the surface, P. juliae tends to make surface rhizomes, not unlike those of Iris cristata.For the record, mine is thrum-eyed. Maybe a Scottish Forumist would like to photograph the naturalized colony near Glasgow.
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Maybe a Scottish Forumist would like to photograph the naturalized colony near Glasgow.
More to the point, maybe a Glaswegian lover of primulas and his fellow man would like to collect seed from the naturalized colony near Glasgow and donate it to the exchange.
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Good luck, Rodger, in your attempts to galvanise a Glaswegian into action! :-\
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David,
I agree with Lesley your plant looks like one of the plenty forms of Primula x pruhoniciana (syn. x Juliana) (P. juliae hybrids).
We had similar discussions on the forum a while ago and I remember an article:
http://www.alaskaprimroses.org/articles/PrimulaJuliae.htm (http://www.alaskaprimroses.org/articles/PrimulaJuliae.htm)
It gives some background of breeding history.
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Primula x pruhoniciana (syn. x Juliana) (P. juliae hybrids)
Anyone interested in this group of primulas should be alert for any of George Ahrends' "Schnee" cultivars to turn up.
There were, afaict, about half a dozen of these, but they're almost all out of cultivation - or at least not widely available.
The two I have, 'Schneesturm' and 'Schneetreiben' are pretty good doers, so it's a little odd that the group as a whole has become so rare.
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Primula x pruhoniciana (syn. x Juliana) (P. juliae hybrids)
Anyone interested in this group of primulas should be alert for any of George Ahrends' "Schnee" cultivars to turn up.
We (here) should be so lucky! Yes, they're generally all good doers so long as their compost is kept enriched and fertile and they are kept damp through hot times. I think that so few are now available or even in cultivation for the most part, is largely a matter of fashion and that so many hundreds of new and quite different plants became available in the 60s, 70, 80s and 90s from so many different collectors. They were relatively common, easy and even, one could say, homely plants that suddenly they were no longer greatly desirable, a great shame, as it is with so many plants, apparently lost to modern gardeners.
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I suspect that Ahrends' "Schnee" primulas are probably all still in existence in gardens, but their identity is long lost.
The two I have are visually indistinguishable, but where I first planted them, 'Schneesturm' thrived and 'Schneetreiben' moped. I moved 'Schneetreiben' to a different location where other P. × pruhoniciana cultivars had done well, and it perked up and has grown quite happily since. This suggests that in favored gardens, these delicate little plants can exist with little or no care.
You, Lesley, may very well be positioned better in NZ to recover some of these "lost" cultivars than those of us who live in less primula-congenial climates.
As a concession to the sensibilities of the readership I will refrain from mentioning another lost cultivar of P. × pruhoniciana, 'E. R. Janes', supposedly orange-colored, and evidently long gone.
The thing I like about these "Schnee" cultivars is the small size of the flowers. I'm very tired of the bigger=better equation; there's plenty of room in the garden for small delights that don't impose themselves on you, though they require some care in siting. Other examples of small=beautiful are Acis autumnale and Anemone caucasica.
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Well I'd better not mention 'E R Janes' either then. A pity because I did have it once and as I recall, it wasn't so much orange but a sort of biscuit colour with a little bit of red pigment mixed in with that. It was compact and very pretty and another I would love to have again. :'(