Bird's-eye Primrose

Bird's-eye Primrose, Primula farinosa, Gait Barrows, Lancashire

This little primrose is a plant primarily of the northern England limestones, here growing on lime-rich marl next to Haweswater in the Gait Barrows NNR in Lancashire. To give an idea of scale, this flowering head is perhaps 3cm across, and it is borne on a stalk that is 15-20 cm in height.

Haweswater is a small marl tarn, rich in calcium carbonate from the underlying limestone bedrock and the lime precipitates out over time to form marl sediments. The tarn would once have been larger, but the gradual accumulation of marl is filling it in. Where the bird's-eye primrose grows now used to be part of the tarn. On this unusual sediment, there is a correspondingly unusual collection of plants growing. Another notable species is the black bog-rush (Schoenus nigricans) at one of its very few localities in Lancashire.

It was overcast and a little damp today, the blue skies and sun of the last couple of days apparently gone again. I went for a short walk in drizzle to see the primrose this morning. The woods were alive with young blue and great tits calling for their parents to feed them.

We had a little run out to Jenny Brown's Point in the afternoon, and then I planted a few more of the young vegetables that I have been neglecting. Hopefully they won't be too root-bound to establish now.