Primulaceae (prim-u-LA-see-ee)
Iconic Features
- Simple leaves, often in basal rosettes
- Flowers in umbels, often from a scape
- Flower parts usually in fives
- Stamens aligned with petals
Description (Jepson)
- Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
- 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
- Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
- Flower parts in fours and fives
- Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
- Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
- Taproot system
- Annual or perennial herbs or slightly woody plants
- Leaves
- Simple (not divided into leaflets)
- Generally in a basal rosette; or may be opposite (2 leaves at each junction with stem) or whorled (3 or more leaves/flowers at each junction with stem)
- Lack stipules (pair of leaf-like structures at the base of the leaf stalk)
- Flowers
- Inflorescence (flower arrangement) an umbel (a spoke-like flower cluster with stalks radiating from a single point)
- Often on a scape (a leafless stem rising from ground level)
- Bisexual, radially-symmetrical flowers
- Flower parts usually in fives
- Stamens (male flower parts) aligned in the middle of each petal
- Ovary superior (above the attachment of other flower parts)
- Inflorescence (flower arrangement) an umbel (a spoke-like flower cluster with stalks radiating from a single point)
- Fruit a capsule (a dry, multi-chambered fruit that splits open at maturity)
Notes
- Approximately 600 species in the northern hemisphere
- Includes shooting stars and the common garden plants primrose and cyclamen
- Some plants in this family (e.g. shooting stars) are pollinated most effectively by sonication or “buzz pollination”
- Flowers have specialized “poricidal,” tube-shaped anthers containing firmly-attached pollen and having, unlike most anthers, small openings, like a salt shaker, which regulate the dispersal of pollen
- Only bumblebees, along with a few other native bees, can release this pollen by grasping the flower with their legs or mouthparts and vibrating their flight muscles without moving their wings (See video Buzz Pollination)
- Vibrating bees may generate forces 50x that of gravity–5x what fighter jet pilots experience (U. of Stirling 2020), causing pollen to “blast out” of the anthers (Zimmer 2013)
- Buzz-pollinating bees make a distinctive, middle-C “raspberry” sound, which is higher pitched than the buzz of flight (Rosenthal 2008)
- Only about 9% of the world’s flowers are buzz pollinated (Buchmann 1985)
- A number of important agricultural crops, such as tomatoes and potatoes, require buzz pollination
- Poricidal anthers have evolved several times in disparate plant families, an example of convergent evolution (de Luca and Vellejo-Marin 2013)
- Scientific name from the included genus Primula, from the Medieval Latin phrase prīmula vēris, “little first one of the spring,” referring to the plants’ early flowering
- Common name from Medieval Latin prīma rosa, “first rose”
- Distinct from the similarly-named Evening Primrose Family (Onagraceae), which includes clarkias and sun cups
- Represented by 2 species at Edgewood
Specific References
Buchmann, S.L. 1985. Bees use vibration to aid pollen collection from non-poricidal flowers. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 58: 517-525. JSTOR.
de Luca, P.A. and M. Vellejo-Marin. 2013. What’s the “buzz” about? The ecology and evolutionary significance of buzz pollination. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 16: 429-435.
University of Stirling. 2020, Jul. 29. Bees’ buzz is more powerful for pollination, than for defense or flight. ScienceDaily.
Zimmer, C. 2013, Jul. 11. Unraveling the pollinating secrets of a bee’s buzz. New York Times.
Browse Some Edgewood Plants in this Family
