Novel form of double snowdrop?

[Alan_b]

In the woods and hedgerows near my home there are many snowdrops, all Galanthus nivalis, both the single and the double (flore pleno) form.  A few times I have observed a type of double snowdrop that is new to me; I wonder if it has been recorded previously?  You might call it a "snowball" type because the flowers remain in a tight ball and never open.

 

The group in the bottom left of the picture is of this "snowball" type, whilst the flowers top right are normal doubles.  The "snowball" flowers are quite small but the effect is not unattractive.  Are there existing cultivars like this?

[partisangardener]

I found the Double Nivalis which I inherited from my Grandfather always quite variable.
Some variations persist some turn up once in a while.
These snowballs look familiar to me. It is a bit late but I still have some similar ones.

[Alan_b]

parisangardener, yes those are similar but the flowers don't hang down in the way that the ones I found do.  Yours are a bit more like spikey doubles which tend to point upwards.

[partisangardener]

I would take some of yours and separate them.
Since I have given away more than 90 % of my double snow drops and only several thousand left I would have to look to all the other places they went to find such  beauties as yours.
I' certainly never had such big clump of this form. They grow so fast, that I never separated them to single bulbs. So they vary very much in each tuft.

This doubles grow even several bulbs on the stem above the bulb. I I put them rather flat in the ground I have next year 3 to 6 new flowering ones from each bulb.
But I have a friend which spread them single bulb wise in his garden some years ago. I will have a look this week.
In the meanwhile I have two new places with few hanging ones in the hedge.

The double ones have here in my garden the longest flowering time of all snowdrops. They start sometime in early January and finish beginning of April.