Primrose petals

In one of the beds between the car park and the railway station at Hampton Court yesterday, I happened to notice, perhaps for the first time ever, that the five petals of primrose flowers, at least on the plant that I spotted there, were deeply lobed, heart shaped - in the way of the leaves of the spotted burclover, noticed at reference 1.

A fact confirmed on a second outing, later the same day in a front garden near where we live in Epsom.

And then again today, in our own back garden.

So maybe they all do it. Certainly the ones at reference 2 do - even if the purple flowers are better from this point of view than the yellow ones. I also learn that the flowers of any one plant come in one of two forms, pin and thrum, and it takes two to tango. Or, in botanist speak, the flowers are hermaphrodite but heterostylous. Which might be accurate, but is a little confusing for the beginner.

As we used to be told rather too often, we learn something new every day.

PS 1: I wonder now whether the mechanisms for generating hearts in leaves are anything like those for doing the same in petals? From a growth point of view, are petals just modified leaves?

PS 2: then waking this Saturday morning, I wondered about wood engravers. I can only put my hand on foxgloves, but Google turns up the Mackley engraving included above from a teaching resource about flowers and natural selection.

While I could put my hand on this print copy of a Poole engraving. So they had both looked a good deal more carefully than I usually manage - which is what I had expected.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/more-trivia.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primula_vulgaris.

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