A primula is a small plant, wild or in a garden, with a bunch of bright flowers — yellow, pink, purple, red — sitting close to the ground on soft leaves. It comes out early in the year, when the mornings can still be cold, which is why garden shops sell it in pots as a cheerful winter-to-spring plant. You grow it to look at, not to eat. English speakers also say primrose for some of the same plants; primula is a little more the garden and science name for the whole group. Though actually, if you already know primrose, you are very close — many of the primulas in a flower shop are the plants people loosely call primroses.