G. caucasicus (large late)

[apothecary]

Now here is one of several plants I'm getting round to which have descriptors but aren't named varieties.  Can anyone enlighten me as to the significance of this?  Is it normal to separate out species snowdrops according to size or flowering time, but with no intention of registering an official name if they prove worthy? Is such a habit specific to the caucasicus species?

I have this one called G. caucasicus (large late).  I should also have a 'large early', but there aren't any signs of it as yet.

Would now really be classed as late? And, accepting that this has been in a pot for a year and may be behaving strangely, would anyone call these flowers large? They look medium to small to me, but I'm not familiar with the species as a whole and I haven't seen any outside yet.

At any rate, I don't know if these snowdrops are interesting because their character isn't officially recognised, or if it's perfectly normal for a galanthophile to label variations within a species without considering them particularly special.

Or should I be watching these extra carefully to see if they deviate from their description according to year, location etc? Were they at beta-testing stage when the came to us?

Basically, what do you all reckon?  Are these nice/good? Worth doing more with?

Many questions I know.  I just wonder what it's all about really and you're the people that know all.

Thanks.

[Hans J]

Hi Kristina ,

please dont use longer G. caucasicus as name for these Galanthus - it is a G. elwesii ssp. monostictus !
This plants comes not from Caucasus -they are from Turkey .

I have real G. caucasicus from Georgia -they are really different !
Please read page 120 of the book "The genus Galanthus" from A.Davis

There is a lot of confusion with this wrong named "caucasicus" and we should not use longer this name

Greetings
Hans

[apothecary]

Yes thanks for reminding me of all that.  It rings a big bell from when I started going through these last year, but if I remember rightly, there was too little left of the plant to justify changing the name to anything in particular at the time and so I was intended to do it this year instead and we left the original label in so as not to confuse matters by making it an 'unknown'.

[Martin Baxendale]

I still call 'em caucasicus in private, but strictly speaking Hans is right. Elwesii monostictus it is (unless they change it again later - the whole caucasicus/elwesii monostictus situation seems pretty muddled, although I understand new field collections may be starting to clarify things a bit).

Anyway, the 'Large late' label may have been Primrose Warburg's aid-memoir or (more likely) John Grimshaw's way of letting recipients know roughly what they were getting when the gift from her collection involved an un-named species. It doesn't neccessarily indicate that anyone intended giving it a name at any point. I have snowdrops all over the garden with things like "caucasicus, late, dwarf" and "plicatus, dark mark, twin scapes" etc. It's just a reminder to myself what's what amongst the un-named snowdrops (and most collections have quite a few of those as well as named cultivars). By the way, many named snowdrops are not actually registered - people just name 'em and and pass 'em around.

To me it looks bigger than some, and smaller than others. It has a nice mark. But should just be labelled Gal. elwesii monostictus (up to you if you want to maintain the original label addition of 'Large, late' in brackets - you'll often find that what's 'late' one year can turn out to be 'early' another year and vice versa! Plus climate change is playing havoc with snowdrop flowering times._

[Paul T]

I have an Australian variety called "Norm's Late" (whether that is a descriptor or a proper name I don't honestly know) and some years it is almost the first up, and others very late.  Putting it in a pot can have it flowering at a very different time to in the garden, some years literally a couple of months difference.

[Anthony Darby]

Do you have any pics of Galanthus caucasicus Hans?