23-Feb Primroses and Violets in Bloom

Nowadays, few wild flowers have suffered so much as primroses from trowel thieves. True primrose woods and banks are all but gone in London, many now lost to scrub. Railway embankments and cemeteries such as Morden Park cemetery is where they may still get noticed as well as the Reigate area, particularly St. Katherines churchyard. At Wisley, the early purple Caucasian primrose Primula sibthorpii, first introduced in 1638 may be seen with P. acaules var. rubra and P. ‘Gigha’, another attractive early white primrose. Other rare primroses can be found in the Savill Gardens. Queen Victoria and her prime minister Disraeli shared a mutual interest in wild primroses. She sent a wreath of them to his funeral and this interest led to the Primrose League and then on to Primrose Day. The flowers have been candied since the seventeenth century and, at one time, the juice of the stems was used to remove unwanted freckles.

Wild violets also start to appear in February, usually towards the end of the month. These are normally the sweet Viola odorata, common dog violet V. riviniana, hairy violet V. hirta and the early dog violet V. reichenbachiana. Of these the first two are the earliest. Later, there will be more species and their identification will become more difficult.

In the wild, violets are normally found along woodland edges and on calcareous grassland, but as they are so loved by gardeners, it is in gardens we normally first see them. Sweet violets are the most famous of all. They set seed easily, and also reproduce by runners. This is the only violet with a perfume, which explains why you should always smell the first violet of the year that you encounter. The flowers produce a substance called ionine which quickly dulls our sense of smell. This can be tested by smelling violets until their scent disappears, then, after a pause, smelling them once again. The smell returns and then is lost again. Laertes describes this well in Hamlet when he says:

“A violet in the youth of primy nature
Forward, not permanent sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute,
No more”

Hairy violets are more restricted than the sweet ones, growing mainly in short grassland on the southern edge of London. They have slightly narrower leaves, no fragrance, no runners and usually flower a week or two later than sweet violets.

To confuse the issue further, there is a hybrid Viola permixta. Both hairy and sweet violets are best looked for among the soft turf on the North Downs e.g. around St Martha’s hill. A subspecies of the hairy violet V. hirta subsp. calcarea is probably the most likely to be found. If larger, scentless violets are found in woodland this month, these are going to be either the common dog violet or the early dog violet.