This is a section of beautiful plants, but they are not easy to grow. They come from wet, and sometimes not so wet, meadows. They make rosettes of flat leaves, pressed flat to the ground, and have a short upright stem with about half a dozen, sometimes quite a lot more, flowers, each hanging daintily downwards. These appear mainly in spring, but a few may follow in autumn. In the parent species the flowers are bright, deep purple, but there are other species with red, deep pink and yellow flowers.

Primula dickieana is a beautiful small plant from wet places high in the Himalaya, widespread in the wild but rare in cultivation. Open rosettes of leaves lie below the short upright stems, each with up to half a dozen quite large, flat-faced flowers, which can be purple, white or yellow, in each case with the centre yellow. In fact the yellow ones are really the same as the white, but with the yellow zone extending outwards almost to the rim.