Crimea and Bessarabia snowdrops in March 2013

[Oakwood]

Many thanks - in such manner our Sveta explored the inner mark infrapopulation variability with further construction of statistical series. Nail design is extremally important in this case!!!

[Maggi Young]

Ah yes! Now we can see how to distinguish a specialist galanthus botanist 
A woman dedicated to her subject, for sure!

[Brian Ellis]

Excellent! Almost - but not quite  as good as the snowdrops themselves

[Tim Ingram]

No wonder so many years ago people came home from the Crimea with stories of snowdrops - I'm amazed that the natural variation is so great, just as much as you find in cultivation where you would have thought selection would have broadened it well away from Nature. Is some of this the result of hybridisation where species overlap?

[Oakwood]

No wonder so many years ago people came home from the Crimea with stories of snowdrops - I'm amazed that the natural variation is so great, just as much as you find in cultivation where you would have thought selection would have broadened it well away from Nature. Is some of this the result of hybridisation where species overlap?

No, Tim. All these variants were found in different populations of plicatus or graecus in the wild, which never overlapped. There is some 500 km disjunction between both species Crimea and Bessarabia areas. And I suppose there is a strong reproductive isolation between these two species when cultivated.
All normal but polymorphic by segment shapes and mark appearance structure of plicatus flowers reflect just the norms of reaction of an attribute in natural populations. Other pattern we could observe in a case of recessive but not-lethal mutations that we note some regularity in their phenes' distribution in a manner of commitment to a certain population. So, in some more-less isolated plicatus or graecus populations we found only 1-2 types of mutations, e.g. only inverse-outer-segment type or/and green-tips-inner segment type in explored plicatus population, or greenish-outer-petal type in graecus population 1, or curly-segments type in graecus population 2.

[ian mcenery]

Dmitri and Olga thanks for sharing your trip with us. Some great plants though I'm not sure about some of the snowdrop mutations

[ichristie]

Hello, wonderful snowdrop pictures, we also have some twin headed Gal. plicatus and one with fused head so many different forms as well, some pictures for interest,  cheers Ian the Christie kind.

[Paddy Tobin]

Dimitri and Olga,

Many thanks for your wonderful report on your travels. Such wonderful snowdrops and outstanding photography. The nail decoration is perfection.

Paddy

[Melvyn Jope]

Hello Olga and Dimitri, many thanks for taking the time to show us your wonderful photographs,makes us feel very envious when you show the locations that you can travel to.

[KentGardener]

Dimi and Olga - thank you.   

I have been waiting to open your thread until I had time to look at it as I expected it to be good - and I am not disappointed.  Wow.    The perfect thread with my morning cuppa.

There are so many gems you have managed to take photographs of - I must admit that it is early and I read the name Sveta as Steve!  I think the most different to anythying I have seen in cultivation are Sveta and this one of the trym type.

 

Good camouflage clothing in one of Olga's pics.   

I can imagine all of the young ladies will be sporting snowdrops nails along with their Emma hats at next years snowdrop events!   

[Oakwood]

Many thanks, guys!! glad you appreciated our journey and our findings!   

[ArnoldT]

It's such a wonderful thing to be taken across the world and see these plants in their native environment.

Thank you.

[annew]

Fantastic, Dmitri - and Olga's photographs superb as always.

[Natalia]

 Dim, I congratulate on interesting expedition!
Remarkable variation G. plicatus Sveta and G.graecus curls.
You with Svetlana and Yury - excellent botanists - galanthophylles!

[Ru]

Another week-end in Crimea. End of March, beginning of April.