![]() Primula auricula ‘Lincoln Cuckoo’, a green double, looks like a little green rose Double auriculas have to have enough petals to fully conceal the central tube to reach show standards. Regular readers will not be surprised that I’m a fan of the doubles, which look for all the world like diminutive roses, their flowers packed with waved and scrolled petals. ![]() Hybridising plants is a game of numbers – often very big numbers – and any serious hybridiser knows that plants that do not take a step towards at least one goal sooner or later have to be discarded. “Usually,” he says, “we throw the pin eyed ones away.” Sumptuous purple double: Primula auricula ‘Lady Day’īrutal, you might think, especially if you do not have any auriculas and would like some. He explained that thrum eyed plants are easier for humans to cross, pin eyed flowers being more suited to pollination by insects. I asked Andy Kemp (who was kind enough to come up and enquire if this newcomer was enjoying the show in general and one of his plants in particular) why this should be. Pin eyed auriculas are disqualified from competition. Thrum eyed primulas have a circle of the male, pollen-bearing anthers visible at the top of the tube pin eyed plants have sticky female stigmas at the top. Plants of the same species can sometimes take one of two different forms which helps prevent self-fertilisation. One mystery I was hoping to solve when I visited the Cheadle auricula show is what’s so bad about a pin eye, given so many primulas have one (roughly 50%)? Pips are the individual flowers, compared to the flower truss on the scape or stem farina is the white, powdery meal or paste found on some of the flowers and leaves the tube is the hollow at the very centre of the flower the carrot is the main root, producing smaller offsets that can be split off to form a new plant. Before the show, I had dug out my old primula books by Mary A. It feels like we need to learn a new language to follow auricula fanciers’ talk of pip, scape, farina, tube and carrot – familiar words in the main, with less familiar applications. In the hall, people were peering at rows of circus plants with button shaped flowers in bright, bold colours decorated with rings, stripes, powder, and fancy edges. ![]() Bargain hunters may like to note there was no admission fee and a whole table of cakes were being offered at the knockdown price of £1 per slice. Visitors were ‘warmly welcomed’ from 2 o’clock onwards, so I headed on down. It was a timely thought: the N.A.P.S.’s Northern Section’s auricula show was held at Kingsway School in Cheadle on Saturday. After writing my last post it occurred to me that I might have the chance to realise my long-held ambition and go to an auricula show.
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