Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Inside the flower tube, each of the five {stamens} is fixed directly in front of a petal lobe instead of in the gaps between the lobes. Slice the seed {capsule} across and a single open chamber appears, with the seeds carried on a central column instead of on partitions or walls. The genus name is a Latin diminutive meaning roughly 'little first one', a nod to how early in spring its members bloom. The species epithet points to a mountain district in central Japan, on the island of Honshu, where the plant grows wild. It grows in moist, humus-rich shade beneath mountain forest canopy in Japan, and is now rare and listed as endangered there. Its flowers open as flat discs of five notched petals, 0.75 to 1 inch (18 to 25 mm) across, springing from a slender tube. The leaf blades and the flowering stems are clothed in soft, downy hairs, and the leaf surface is puckered like corrugated velvet. Slender {stolons} creep out from the parent plant and root, knitting one plant into a ground-cover mat over a few years. The rounded, heart-based leaves, 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 cm) across, are cut into 5 to 7 shallow lobes, a maple-like shape that is unusual in its genus. A few pink flowers gather in a single {umbel} on a leafless stalk 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 cm) tall in April and May, above the leaves. This maple-leaved, pink-flowered creeper from the mountain forests of central Honshu is the Japanese woodland cousin of the cowslip and the oxlip.

Accepted Answer

Primula kisoana

Name That Plant #121