Primula tsariensis W.W.Sm., Notes Roy. Bot. Gard. Edinburgh. 19: 211. 1937.
Section Petiolares
Link to Flora of China description
Link to Flora of Bhutan description
Type specimen: Ludlow & Sherriff 1711 resides at British Museum (specimen BM000996793) and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (specimen E00024691).
P. tsariensis var. porrecta: Forrest, Notes Roy. Bot. Gard. Edinburgh. 19: 213. 1937. Type specimen: Ludlow & Sherriff 2196 resides at British Museum (specimen BM000996793) and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (specimen E00024694). A robust variant with scapes to 33cm.
P. tanneri subsp. tsariensis (syn): Richards, J. Scott. Rock Gard. Club 15(3): 209. 1977.
P. tanneri subsp. tsariensis var. alba (syn): Richards, J. Scott. Rock Gard. Club 15(3): 209. 1977.
P. strumosa Balf.f. & R.E.Cooper var. perlata (syn): W.W.Sm. & Fletcher, Trans Roy Soc Edinburgh 61(2):305. 1944. Type specimen: Ludlow & Sherriff 3383 resides at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (specimens E00024692, E00024693 and Swedish Museum of Natural History S0947252). Yellow flowered.
Epithet: Named for the Tsari valley, Tibet.
Distribution: China, Tibet, Bhutan.
An efarinose species, with prominent reddish bud scales, the leaves appearing at the same time as the flowers. Leaves elliptic to ovate-lanceolate, rounded to obtuse at the apex, base broadly cuneate, subcordate or rounded, subregularly crenate at the margin, glabrous and efarinose on both surfaces, the petiole lightly winged and usually hidden by the bud scales. Scape 1-12cm, may be slightly farinose at the apex, with umbels of 1-8 purple flowers with a yellow eye, sometimes yellow or white. Calyx campanulate, sometimes sprinkled with farina, cut to the middle into ovate-lanceolate lobes, obtuse to acute at the apex with the lobe margins ciliate. The distribution for this species is mainly in SE Tibet, but a population exists in north Central Bhutan where a yellow form occurs and a possible hybrid population collected under Ludlow & Sherriff #3367 and associated numbers. On the Chubumba La (border of Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh) Ludlow and Sherriff collected under #3984 what they thought were hybrids in a population of P. tsariensis with the second parent species assumed to be P. chionogenes. Lumped into P. tanneri by Richards but distinct from that species by the rounded leaf apex and dimorphic leaves which are elliptic with an attenuate base at flowering and later larger, ovate with a truncate or cordate base.
