Cowslip
Primula veris
Family · Primulaceae · Harmless
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The yellow primrose of mountain meadows, with a bunch of bell-shaped flowers all nodding to one side atop a stalk, like a ring of keys. It is the flower that names the season in Portuguese.
Uplands · Fields and pasture · Oak woods
Also known asSt Peter's keys, paigle
How to tell it
A basal rosette of wrinkled oval leaves, narrowing abruptly to the stalk, short-haired beneath. A leafless stalk ten to thirty centimetres with an umbel of five to twenty deep yellow bell flowers, all facing the same way. The calyx is broad and inflated, and the flower sits inside it. Range: mainly a Spanish plant, practically absent from Portugal.
What it is confused with
Primrose
Primula vulgaris
The common one has each flower on its own stalk rising straight from the rosette, pale yellow and flat like a plate; this has all the flowers on one shared stalk, in a bunch, deep yellow and in a closed bell.
What it is for
The root is the raw material of cough syrups still listed in the European pharmacopoeia, because of its saponins. Traditional and industrial use. Wild populations are protected in several countries because of collecting, and a cowslip is not dug up.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.