This meandering stream, a mile south of the city centre, has carved a small, steep-sided, wooded valley through soft alluvial soil, providing a refuge for flora and fauna that have long since been displaced by surrounding agriculture. Had I not strayed from the footpath around the fields and explored its slopes I might never have stumbled upon a hidden, isolated population of wild primroses (Primula vulgaris). They were growing in an unharvested hazel coppice that, judging by the diameter of the trunks, had been forgotten for several decades.
Context counts for a lot in the aesthetic impact of wild flowers. A primrose transplanted into a garden is a pretty flower. Finding this swathe of wildlings in such a classic, albeit semi-natural, habitat, soon to be followed by the promise of bluebells, was much more: a spectacle to make the spirits soar after a long, cold winter.
Primroses have been cultivated since medieval times, alongside their natural hybrid with the cowslip, known as the false oxlip, which is the ancestor of the garden polyanthus. Both it and the primrose have been further hybridised with more exotic species to produce cultivars in every colour of the spectrum, which are now mainstays of municipal spring bedding schemes everywhere.
There may be two-way gene exchange going on between primulas in countryside and garden. On several occasions I have found wild primroses, sometimes distant from habitation, with salmon-pink flowers. These might be natural colour mutants or could be the result of roaming insects carrying pollen from gaudy garden cultivars back into wild populations.
As I sat among these primroses, a pollinator darted into view; a bee-fly (Bombylius major). It probed each flower with a long tongue held rigidly in front of its head, penetrating deep into the floral tube, an operation as precise as a space station docking manoeuvre. When it settled I could see a dusting of pollen on its face.
It visited dozens of flowers before vanishing as quickly as it had come. I wondered how far it might have carried pollen in its spring search for nectar; the nearest multicoloured cultivated primroses were in gardens half a mile away.
