words and photography: Alessandra Ressa
No matter how cold and gray the winter, in Trieste’s gardens and Carso woods winter jasmine and primrose are now in bloom. Their bright yellow January through March flowers are the first to announce that Spring is just around the corner, their reassuring color almost an anticipation of the beautiful sunny days ahead.
Winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) is a favorite shrub in Trieste’s private and public gardens for its early bloom and resilience to extreme weather conditions, including these days’ Bora winds. The flower’s blossoming peaks after Christmas, which is why it is also named Yingchun in Chinese, which means “the flower that welcomes Spring”. It is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant. The solitary flowers, often appearing on the bare stems (hence the Latin nudiflorum, literally “naked flower”) have six petals and are bright yellow.
Away from tended gardens, in the cool shade of the hilly Carso woods over Trieste where the humid soil is rich in nutrients, another shy, yellow bloom is ready to be admired. It is the much beloved primrose, Primula vulgaris. The scientific name Primula is a diminutive of the Latin primus, “prime”, alluding to the fact that this flower is among the first to appear in spring. The vernacular name has the same meaning: primrose derives from a late Latin form prima rosa, consisting of prima, “first” (feminine), and rosa, “rose”. The Latin specific epithet vulgaris means “common”, in the sense of “widespread”. In recent years it has suffered from over-collection and theft so that few natural displays of primroses in abundance can now be found. To prevent excessive damage to the species, picking of primroses or the removal of primrose plants from the wild is illegal all over Italy. The shade Primrose Yellow exists in some paint and color systems, and is named after this flower.
