Cowslip

Where it grows

Cowslips inhabit unimproved chalk and limestone grassland across Europe and western Asia. Postwar conversion of pasture to arable cropping decimated British populations; conservation and roadside protection have allowed them to recover, and they’re now a common sight on motorway verges where mowing is deliberately delayed.

How to recognise it

A small spring perennial twenty to thirty centimetres tall with a basal rosette of crinkled, downy oblong leaves. Each flower stem holds a one-sided cluster of ten to thirty nodding bell-shaped flowers, each with a long pale green calyx tube and a small flat yellow corolla marked with five deeper orange spots.

Garden & cultural uses

Cowslip wine, fermented from picked petals, was a popular country drink in Britain through the nineteenth century. The flowers are still gathered in some rural traditions for May Day garlands. Cowslip can hybridise with primrose where their ranges overlap, producing the so-called false oxlip.

In folklore

In English folklore the cowslip was the flower of Saint Peter, whose keys it was said to resemble — hence its old country names paigle and Saint Peter’s herb.