Difference Between Primrose & Fairy Primrose

Fairy Primrose

• Native to China and often called Chinese primrose, fairy primrose is a small, upright plant with crinkly bright green leaves and flowers in pink, white or purple. It is most often sold as a houseplant. Place it in a bright east window and keep the soil moist but not wet. The flower stems appear in fall and winter, persisting into early spring. Planted outdoors, fairy primrose thrives in shade or morning sun. Plant it after all danger of frost has passed.

English Primrose

• Available in bright colors of red, yellow, orange, purple, hot pink and the like, English primroses are a signal of spring. Their flowers rise on single stems from the center of the plant. They can be planted outdoors in February where winter temperatures remain above 15 degrees Fahrenheit. They prefer shade or morning sun and form perennial colonies if they like their site. Give them well-drained, compost-amended soil and water regularly to establish.

Candelabra Primrose

• Tougher than their cousins, candelabra primroses -- P. bulleyana, P. capita and P. japonica -- are hardy to minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Similar to fairy primroses, they have tall stems with a cluster of yellow, orange or red-orange blooms at the top and tiers of flower clusters lower down. They are larger plants, with long, thin leaves that reach 10 inches long. The stems grow to 2 feet tall. Like other primroses, they thrive in morning sun, in well-drained, amended soil with steady moisture. They flower from April through June.

Hose in Hose

• Primula x tommasinii has been grown since the late 1500s. Its name comes from the way some Elizabethan gentlemen wore their stockings -- one inside the other, with the outer stocking turned down. The flowers look as if two flowers have been superimposed, with an identical flower growing out of the lower flower. It results from a mutation of P. vulgaris, where sepals have been transformed into petals. Hardy to minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit, it prefers morning sun and flowers in spring and again in fall.

Other Varieties

• There are about 400 kinds of primroses, which vary in bloom time, flower color, leaf color, form and hardiness. Primroses that resemble fairy primrose, producing clusters of small blooms on their flower stems, include P. denticulata and P. obconica. In 2007, Molbak's, a nursery in Washington that ran primrose trials of 180 varieties, named the Hethor series and the Danova series of P. vulgaris its trial winners for vigor and bloom. The varieties Hethor Denim Blue and Danova Cherry topped the list.