Blue
English
Primrose
"The violet & the primrose too
Beneath a sheltering thorny bough
In bright & lively colours blow
And cast sweet fragrance round."
-Welsh ballad,
traditional
traditional
This bright blue primrose (Primula x acaulis 'Blue' aka P. vulgaris) is shown in April flower. This one's in a primrose bed in a full-sun & sometimes droughty location, which is not ideal for primroses which would prefer dappled sunlight & persistent moisture.
Even so, these do fine, flowering well in March & April, or longer. The clumps' capacity to be evergreen is defeated by the hardship of summer in this exposed position, yet the following late-winter the primroses re-emerge very nicely.
In a more protected spot they often freshen themselves in late summer or early winter when temperatures drop & rains return, & can flower (less overtly than in spring) at any point from September to November. This is a rebloom period more likely with deadheading of the first spring flower.
Blue with yellow eye, this is one of those standards that are even sold in front of grocery stores & drugstores each spring, nothing fancy, very cheap, but surprisingly reliable at perennializing. Blue primroses are also available as seeds that can be sewn directly into the garden & lightly covered with soil in late May to early summer.
They can actually be seeded just about any time during the year in cool climates, so long as it is so hot that they'd get cooked to death as seedlings; & though the adult clumps tolerate conditions well outside their ideal, when getting started from seeds even moisture is pretty much required.
Germination period is irregular & unpredictable, being dependent on garden condition & weather patterns, but predictable if done in coldframes with some control of their conditions.
They germinate fast if started in moist soil when temperatures are in the upper sixties Fahrenheit, but they should be kept cooler after seedlings appear since they're easily heat-exhausted when getting started. They can be put into their permanent spots in about ten weeks. But if the seeds are planted late or left to the vagaries of the open garden, they may not appear in earnest until the following spring. This does them no harm.