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ANOTHER LIFE:In the thicket of bare willows beyond our hedge, the lower twigs fly wisps of fleece dragged from the backs of foraging sheep: they shimmer in the sun like Tibetan prayer flags. On this side, on mossy ground quite frost-shorn of last year’s weeds, a few clumps of primroses gleam, for once unchallengeably prima rosa, writes MICHAEL VINEY
The clear and singing lemon-yellow of the primrose, so strangely full of light, moved the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to one of his special coinages. “Take a few primroses in a glass,” he mused in his journal, “and the instress of brilliancy – sort of starriness: I have not the right word – so simple a flower gives is remarkable. It is, I think, due to the strong swell given by the deeper yellow middle.” But scientists have given more obsessive attention to the primrose than any poet. What put Darwin down on his (often tender) stomach on the lawn, transferring fertilising pollen from flower to flower, was the classic demonstration by Primula vulgaris of floral dimorphism – two different forms of the same flower, each on separate plants, designed to help ensure advantages in fertilisation.
