Primula macrophyllaD.Don

WFO wfo-0001105514 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Primula macrophylla, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. a Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2012-08-03 / obs. 163400964

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 8 botanical countries

Regions where Primula macrophylla is native: Afghanistan, Tadzhikistan, Tibet, Xinjiang, East Himalaya, Nepal, Pakistan, West Himalaya AfghanistanTadzhikistanTibetXinjiangEast HimalayaNepalPakistanWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Primula macrophylla, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Tadzhikistan TZK
Tibet CHT
Xinjiang CHX
East Himalaya EHM ASIA-TROPICAL
Nepal NEP
Pakistan PAK
West Himalaya WHM

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 43 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -30.1 °C -19.6 °C -12.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 5.8 °C 8.1 °C 17.2 °C
Annual rainfall 600 mm 2,222 mm 2,833 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 37 mm 53 mm 220 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 43 research-grade observations of Primula macrophylla that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 21 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Aleuritia macrophylla (D.Don) Soják
  • Aleuritia pulverea (Fed.) Soják
  • Primula aitchisonii Pax
  • Primula atroviolacea Jacquem. ex Duby
  • Primula jaeschkeana Kern.
  • Primula laeschkeana A.Kern. ex Kolb.
  • Primula macrophylla subsp. aitchisonii (Pax) W.W.Sm. & Forrest
  • Primula macrophylla subsp. moorcroftiana (Wall. ex Klatt) W.W.Sm. & Forrest
  • Primula macrophylla subsp. pulverea (Fed.) Halda
  • Primula macrophylla var. lineariloba (Watt) W.W.Sm. & Forrest
  • Primula meeboldii Pax
  • Primula moorcroftiana Wall. ex Klatt
  • Primula nivalis unranked moorcroftiana (Wall. ex Klatt) Farrer
  • Primula nivalis var. macrophylla (D.Don) Pax
  • Primula nivalis var. macrophylla (D.Don) Pax & R.Knuth
  • Primula nivalis var. moorcroftiana (Wall. ex Klatt) Pax
  • Primula pulverea Fed.
  • Primula purpurea Royle
  • Primula stuartii var. lineariloba G.Watt
  • Primula stuartii var. moorcroftiana (Wall. ex Klatt) Watt
  • Primula stuartii var. purpurea (Royle) Watt

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.