Saturday 5 May 2001
In focus: Primula auricula
Mary Keen on an unnatural looking flower
OSCAR WILDE, no great lover of the outdoors, complained that nature lacked a sense of design. "Her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out."
A collection of show auriculas might have made him think again. These hybrids, created from crossing the alpine Primulas auricula and hirsuta, are so artificial looking, so varied in their colours, so utterly pristine in their brilliance, that their flowers look as though they have been hand-painted by an artist of exquisite taste.
Many people hate auriculas because they look unnatural.
The flowers come in shades of tawny brown or green and white, grey-mauve and amethyst blue, gold, ruby and lacquer red - the sort of range that other flowers rarely muster. If your preference is for large and single-hued blossoms, as with rhododendrons, or for simple and unimproved ones, such as snowdrops, auriculas may leave you cold.
There are varieties that come in as many as four colours. Imagine a circle of wet-paint yellow, surrounded by a ring of pure matt white, then a fringed rim of gloss black over petals of dull green. Think picotees, scallops, prinked perfection and peculiar colours and ask yourself if this is what you want of flowers. If it is, you must be prepared to make arrangements that will be as elaborate as the flowers are contrived.
Auriculas have been pampered darlings for centuries. In the 16th century, Huguenot weavers and lace-makers are credited with the introduction of the auricula to England. The weavers worked at home and left their looms several times a day to adjust the position of their pots, whenever sun or rain threatened. Their progeny were watched with the care that others reserve for their children. Feasts and shows offered a chance to meet other addicts and to compare their perfections. It is a tradition that continues today.
For some of us, who, as with the weavers and lace-makers, work at home, growing auriculas is possible, provided you can spare time most days to attend to their needs. Although they can manage frozen winters, they cannot abide the wet and also need shade from the sun, almost as though the brightly painted colours might run or fade if exposed.
To grow the most desirable sorts, the green and grey-edged Shows, the Fancies, or the Selfs (see list below) and for any with mealy grey leaves you must grow plants in pots and keep them from rain in winter and sun in summer. A frame will do it, because they need no heat but they must be kept in an airy place.
I have kept auriculas under cloches open at both ends, and this is fine, but my best-loved plants have a small shed to themselves, a stone ex-privy with a glass roof and a permanently open door. There are more than 200 in there, ranged on seven shelves of staging as the old florists placed them. In summer, all the pots are moved round to the north side of the house, where they perch on the window sills.
Watering is a chore, because it must be done without touching their leaves. If plants are in 3in pots, you cannot afford to leave them too long. In warm growing weather, they might need water every day, in winter once every 10 days would be enough.
All auriculas need a free-draining gritty compost - John Innes is better than peat (or peat substitutes) - because if the water cannot get away the root will rot, or root aphids might strike, which show as a woolly collar around the plants. Sciarid flies, which are like small midges, can also result from too much water.
There is, too, the question of feeding. In earlier centuries, books were written about the best compost to use. Some early growers swore by night soil, others by composted corpses or sheep dung.
Modern growers rely on bottled tonics but cannot agree on which is best. I find that four weeks of a high-nitrogen fertiliser when the plants start to grow, sometime in February, followed by a tomato feed works well, but I cannot pretend my plants would win prizes at shows. As the flowers fade, feeding tails off.
By mid-July I do not feed the plants, but their demands never die down. Happy plants produce plantlets from the side of their carrot-shaped roots - sometimes as many as seven from a single plant. These must be detached and potted. I do them in August but others start earlier.
Old plants will need replacing after about three years with young ones, which will only flower well in the second year, so you need a large back up.
There is no rest for the grower. Dead leaves must always be removed because they can cause rot. The worst enemy is vine weevil. Vigilance is vital. V-shaped bites out of leaves, or inexplicably collapsed plants need investigating, but Provado is now available to deter this worst of all pests.
Even with modern aids, auriculas are hard work, but the fuss is all part of the fun. They are the only plants that I take real trouble to please. Border auriculas, which can be grown outside, will give you a flavour of growing the real thing, but I doubt their murky colours and lax habits would ever have convinced Wilde "that nature was a great artist".
Varieties
Green-edged Primula auricula 'Prague', 'Fleminghouse'
Grey or white-edged 'Lovebird', 'Colbury', 'Teem', 'White Ensign'
Fancies: 'Rajah', 'Rolts', 'Hawkwood'
Selfs 'Gizabroon', 'Sirius', 'Brazil', 'Tomboy', 'Mojave'
Stripes 'Karen Cordrey', 'Arundel Stripe'
Alpines 'Walton', 'Joy', 'Rowena Argus', 'Andrea Julie', 'Adrian'
-- Anonymous, May 04, 2001