The candelabra primulas (the Proliferae section) are wonderful plants, originating from China and the Himalaya, for woodland or damp, even extremely wet, places. They make clumps of strong leaves, deciduous in some species and persisting through the winter in others, and then send up their tall stems. At intervals up the stems there are whorls of ten or so flowers, each ring opening in succession, perhaps one every five or six days, . As there can be up to six, even seven, whorls, that gives an exceptional flowering period. So there can be a mass of colour – and that colour can be brilliant orange or yellow, red, pink, white, even dark maroon.

Primula cockburniana 'Kevock Sunshine' is a rare form of this small candelabra primula, with yellow flowers. We have isolated a strain that now gives only yellow-flowered plants, usually with two or three whorls of flowers opening in succession up the flower stems. The foliage dies down for the winter.