Primula inayatii - Yellow-Eyed Pink Primrose

Yellow-Eyed Pink Primrose is a perennial with a fairly stout and elongated rootstock. Flowers are heteromorphic, bluish-purple to pinkish-blue. Sepal-cup cup-shaped, 4.5-5.5 mm long, half cleft, sepals ovate-lanceshaped, pointed, minutely finely velvet-hairy. Flower tube 7-8 mm long, about twice the sepal-cup length, petals 4-5 x 3 mm, inverted-heart-shaped, throat yellow, exannulate. Style about 7 mm long (in pin-eyed flowers), somewhat protruding. Flowering stems are 1-3 in number, 9-13 cm long, up to 19 cm in fruit, not exceeding the largest leaves, 6-14-38-flowered. Largest bract are 1.1-1.2 cm long, up to 1.4 cm in fruit, lanceshaped, hairless. Flower-stalk 1.5-1.7 cm long, exceeding or equalling the larger bracts. Leaves 17-18.5 x 1.3-2.7 cm, up to 28 cm long in fruit, narrow inverted-lanceshaped or elliptic-lanceshaped blunt, subentire from minutely toothed to subcrenulate, nerves prominent on the under surface, with farina of a bright yellow colour. The leaf-stalks and flowering stem are often red in colour. Capsule spherical, more or less included in the sepal-cup. Seeds many, about 0.5 mm long, flanged. Yellow-Eyed Pink Primrose is a cliff plant found in situations where there is dripping water, from low altitudes of 800-1900 m, in NW Himalaya. Flowering: January-March.