American Primrose Society Quarterly Winter Issue 1984 President's Message Volume 42, Number 1 Published January 27,1984 May 1984 be a happy New Year for all! Nineteen-eighty three ended in sorrow for me. After a four year battle with Copyright 1948 cancer my wife, Dorothy, died on November 26. It is because of our many Entered 2nd Class, Edmonds, Washington plant oriented friends and our work with primroses and in the American Primrose Society that I can look forward to a full and enjoyable life. Plans are in the works to make the Spring 1984 issue of the APS Quarterly a memorial issue for Dorothy. In this issue So far this has been a severe winter for the entire United States. Here in the President's Message 3 Pacific Northwest we have a start for a typical bad winter with a week of zero The Origin of the Barnhaven temperatures before Christmas followed by warm and rainy growing weather. Cowichan 4 Daytime high's in the 50's and no frost at night. To complete the typical bad by Florence Bellis On the cover winter we sometimes have two more deep freeze periods after warm growing Propagation of Some Genera in weather. These false springs confuse many plants into starting their growth in Primula auricula var. albocincta, one the Family Primulacaea 9 the midddle of winter. This adds to our definition of a hardy plant 'the ability by Robert E. Straughen of the many species of the Auricula to stay dormant until late spring and survive long periods of winter rain Section discussed by Alice Hills Ray lor The Primrose from without drowining or rotting'. There are a lot of cold hardy primula species Garryard, Ireland 12 in her article The Auricula Primroses that are difficult or impossible to grow here without special protection. Each on page 14. Photograph by Larry Bailey. by E. Charles Nelson section of our country has its own problems for primula, mainly fluctuations of winter temperatures without a reliable snow cover and variations in summer The APS Open Door 13 heat along with its humidity. The Auricula Primroses 14 Sometimes we can grow a species for a few years. We think we have learned by Alice Hills Baylor the secret; then, one of these exceptional winters or summers happen and we Primula Production 18 lose them. That is when the great advantage of the seed exchange comes in. by John G. Seeley Since primula are easy from seed, we can get seed and start over if people have 1984 National Show 22 shared their harvested supply. Sometimes thru repeated efforts with seed saved Resource Directory 1984 23 from plants in captivity a species may adapt to cultivated conditions and Primula Names and Prefixes 28 become a reliable garden plant. by William G. Holt For this reason it is important to save seed from all species you grow, plant APS Seed Exchange 29 again and select. This is generally a slow process of change; but, not always. From the Mailbox . 33 Drastic mutations occasionally occur. We should all be looking for the mutations that result in a more desirable garden plant and increase that plant by seed, division, or cuttings as circumstances dictate. Don't just grow pretty flowers. Accept the challenge of taming new species by growing them from seed, selecting superior seedlings, sowing their seed and continuing the process. It will add a stimulating purpose to your life and "PRIMROSES (ISSN 0162-6671) is maybe you will be able to contribute a new and better plant to the world. published quarterly by American Primrose, Auricula and Primula Herb Dickson Society, 2568 Jackson Highway, Chehalis, WA 98532. Second-class postage paid at Edmonds, Washing- ton and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to PRIMROSES, 1570 9th Ave., N., Edmonds, WA 98020." obtained it from the Nories. They (R.H.S. 1918); 'Wanda' (1919); and The Origin of the increased it and showed it in their the violet-blue 'Bunty' (1926), were exhibits in Spring Shows in the old first generation crosses between P. Willows Point Building in Victoria. juliae and red and violet-blue varie- Barnhaven Cowichan The Palmers Garden was the first to ties of P. vulgaris. Because Wanda distribute the Cowichan Primula had found a place in everyone's by Florence Bellis commercially." garden and hung on to it, she and a Lincoln City, Oregon Others also arranged Cowichan red polyanthus were thought to have exhibits at the Victoria Spring Shows been bee-crossed to produce the The origin and development of the first as to its parentage and, later, the "made up from plants and flowers original Cowichan clone. Later I will true Cowichan polyanthuses — that exact place of origin on Vancouver collected in the Cowichan Valley". give my reason for now thinking this siren strain whose beauty lures and Island, eventually hardened into Visitors began asking the Palmers impossible. ensnares all who come within her legend. That the plant became known "where they could buy the Cowichan But first, if we are going to consider range — has, in the last decade or so, as 'Cowichan', an Indian name Primula, and it was in this way that the the original clone a hybrid, the became a matter of myth, hearsay meaning "valley where the sun Primula received the name 'Cowi- bronze-leaved 'Garryardes' should be and conjecture. As the originator I shines", was the one clear fact cling- chan'". We all can understand why taken into account. A letter from Dr. feel moved to go back over my records ing to it. Now, by the rarest piece of "the Nories were not very happy over Brian Morley, National Botanic and pass on the true and, I think, luck, an accurate account of the exact the change of name from 'Norns' to Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin, states: interesting story of this strain origin of place and name has just 'Cowichan' . ". Cowichan Station, "Professor Clarke (University popularly considered to be the most been received, sweeping aside a in the Cowichan Valley, is but a short College, Dublin) has written me outstandingly beautiful in the hun- mystery that has puzzled the primrose drive into the countryside from about Garryarde primroses. So far as I dred year history of the garden poly- world for so many years. Victoria. And Victoria! That lovely can find out they began as a group in anthus. It is the story of a flower that Acting on my request, a British English-flavoured, flower bedecked 1895 in the garden of Mr. Whiteside put itself without reservation into the Columbia nursery friend of long city sitting on the very southern tip Dane, Garryarde, Co. Kildare with hands of its hybridizer. standing sent out word to those who of Vancouver Island, was but a long cv. Apple Blossom, a putative mutant Otherwise how could a hybrid be might be able to beam some light day's journey by car and ferry from of P. vulgaris, having pink flowers fixed to faithfully reproduce from into the fog of origin. We have Mrs. Barnhaven in Oregon. and bronze leaves . .". Then: seed all the caracteristics of a parent David Barton of Nanaimo to thank After some ten years of busy propa- "Could Apple Blossom have been a clone in a few generations ? How for contacting Mr. and Mrs. Cedric gation by numerous nurseries trying hybrid involving P. vulgaris and could it then be expanded from its Myers who, through a mutal friend, to keep pace with the ever growing another primula available at that time original dark garnet shade into lighter went to the very source—Beatrice demand, the clones — of necessity with red genes for flower and foli- and deeper shades of garnet and Palmer of the widely known Palmer sliced thinner and thinner—became age?". amethyst and eventually on to blues Gardens of that day. Miss Palmer's exceedingly frail. My struggling sterile Apple Blossom appeared exactly deep enough to drown in? How, firsthand knowledge gives us, at last, mite bloomed only once in 1942 fifteen years before P. juliae was then, could it be cajoled into pro- an unclouded picture of the clone before passing on, but that one last introduced into England from the ducing the most stunning and unfor- Cowichan's beginnings and my gasp gave me enough pollen to start Caucasus — a fact which disproves gettable of all polyanthus, in my gratitude to her cannot be measured. producing a husky, free-flowering, popular thought that the bronzed leaf opinion, the Venetian reds—pink- The Myers forwarded to me this fertile replica of the clone. The foun- is always inherited from the P. juliae toned reds often with a black bee, historic account: dation for the Cowichan strain was line. More importantly to me, the that mysterious, unexplainable laid. Garryards I have seen, including thumb print? And all of them, "ORIGIN OF COWICHAN But the riddle of the clone's parent- Guinevere, were acaulis-polyanthus whatever the shade or color, bearing PRIMULA. It was first found in Major age remains unsolved, and as I dig seemingly unable to shake off the the singular stamp of the original L. Knocker's garden on Old Koksilah into my records I am convinced that it acaulis form of Apple Blossom. Cowichan clone—no yellow eye to Road, Cowichan Station, in the early never will be. Because of its bronze- Guinevere, with its soft pink flowers, diminish the solid ground color 1930s. Major Knocker gave it to L. touched leaves, intermediate size and yellow eye and bronzed foliage, was glowing with the hot sheen of live Norie on Old Koksilah Road, who general appearance, the common widely grown in British Columbia at coals, and a classic perfection of truss then called it 'Norns' after the name assumption was that it carried Juliana the time of Cowichan's appearance.