(Wall. ex. Duby) Regel
Description
Primula erosa (Wall. ex Duby) Regel is a Himalayan primrose with a comparatively narrow range, recorded only from India and Nepal, with about 30 georeferenced occurrences in GBIF, reflecting its restricted and localised distribution. It grows in moist, shaded situations such as forest floors, damp banks, mossy rocks and the margins of streams in the temperate to subalpine belt, broadly between about 2500 and 3500 m. The illustrated plants were gathered in West Nepal along the Linji-Khola at 3200 m and the Sallibagar-Khola at 3100 m, both in June, in the cool, humid gorge habitats favoured by this spring-flowering herb.
The plant is a low, rosette-forming perennial growing from a short rhizome with fibrous roots. The leaves form a basal rosette and are oblong to obovate, the margin characteristically erose to crenate-dentate (the epithet erosa) and the blade often farinose or mealy on the lower surface, tapering into a winged petiole. The flowers are borne in a terminal umbel atop a slender, erect scape; the corolla is typically pink to rose-purple with a yellowish eye, the limb of five notched lobes spreading from a slender tube above a campanulate calyx. Plants are heterostylous, with pin and thrum forms. The fruit is a small capsule releasing numerous seeds.
Within the vast genus Primula, this species belongs among the farinose Himalayan primroses and is allied to other small, mealy-leaved montane taxa. Its mealy farina and heterostylous breeding system are characteristic adaptations promoting outcrossing in cool, humid environments. Owing to its limited distribution and dependence on undisturbed moist forest habitat, the species merits monitoring, although no formal conservation assessment has been published.
Author: (Wall. ex. Duby) Regel · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Flora of British India, Richards Primula monograph, Smith & Fletcher revision of Asiatic Primula