Okay, now that I am all fired-up about provenance I am reminded of an account of the origin of the lovely yellow woronowii snowdrop 'Elizabeth Harrison' that was displayed on a table at the back of the recent HPS Snowdrop Group Event. It is widely known that this snowdrop originated in the garden of Elizabeth Harrison and was taken-up by Ian Christie (of Kirriemuir Nursery) who propagated it and named it for her. But how did Ian come to meet the snowdrop? I remember one account that Elizabeth exhibited a pot of it at a show that Ian attended but was that their first meeting? The HPS account also stated (I think) that Ian started with only a single bulb so all the ones subsequently distributed by him derive from that. Is that true? Perhaps this is all written-down somewhere already but there was so much press reporting after the eBay record sale of 2012 that it is hard to sort-out the true facts from the apocryphal stories.
