Galanthus in March 2014

[Gerard Oud]

 The very last ones here ;
The plicatus m basket style is finally open!
And a nice elwesii selection doing the same thing like last year.

[Leena]

I had one unnamed G.elwesii last year which looked the same as the snowdrop in the last picture, I'll have to try to observe if it is like that this year. It hasn't opened it's flowers properly yet, and last night and this morning we got winter back and snow. The snow is probably good for the plants, it protects them from the below freezing temperatures the weather forecast has promised here for the next week.
The snowdrops look like this today, but I hope and believe they continue to flower when the cold spell is over.
G.nivalis
G.nivalis 'Flore Pleno'
G.elwesii

[uvularia]

Some G. nivalis from 4 weeks ago

[Brian Ellis]

The middle one shows promise Paul!

[uvularia]

The middle one shows promise Paul!

Thanks Brian. Here are a few more. 12 is fun

[Brian Ellis]

I like that two as well - it's the virescens!  12 is fun but not my cup of tea, halfway to being a spikey!

[uvularia]

Snowdrops still in fine display in the Slovenian Alps last week. Here is a nice clump with long ovaries and a broad inner perianth mark, And the wood ants seem to like them as well!

[Maggi Young]

Good trip then, Paul?

[Alan_b]

I like all your Caprea series, Paul.  But I'm curious about the name; there is a Salix caprea but that's the uses of that name I know.

[Mariette]

In this part of the world, we enjoyed the most frost-free winter for at least 130 years.  There were only 5 nights with -1-2°C. Despite this fact, many snowdrops didn´t flower early, some decidedly later than in the colder winter the year before. Does anybody know about a possible necessity of low temperatures to induce flowering?

[Cephalotus]

In this part of the world, we enjoyed the most frost-free winter for at least 130 years.

Which part of the world you meant exactly? I can't see where you come from.

[uvularia]

I like all your Caprea series, Paul.  But I'm curious about the name; there is a Salix caprea but that's the uses of that name I know.

Actually the name came about as mistake and it stuck. It is to ring fence a range of pure G. nivalis  I hope to be able to start to offer over the next
couple of years. Of course caprea is goat-like creature

Good trip then, Paul?

Excellent trip thanks. Hellebores, hepaticas and crocuses are everywhere and glorious weather. Ljubljana is a beautiful little city.

[Tim Ingram]

I've just been reading Līga Popova and Jānis Rukšāns 2014 Bulb list and they mention Galanthus platyphyllus as one of the few snowdrops that grows in and prefers open meadows. Does anyone grow this and have experience of it in the garden? Although we grow many named varieties I would very much like to study the species in the garden too, and as with hellebores it is good to keep the species in cultivation as the precursors of all the much greater variation that has arisen from them.

[Brian Ellis]

Actually the name came about as mistake and it stuck. It is to ring fence a range of pure G. nivalis  I hope to be able to start to offer over the next
couple of years. Of course caprea is goat-like creature Excellent trip thanks. Hellebores, hepaticas and crocuses are everywhere and glorious weather. Ljubljana is a beautiful little city.

Jolly good

[Alan_b]

I've just been reading Līga Popova and Jānis Rukšāns 2014 Bulb list and they mention Galanthus platyphyllus as one of the few snowdrops that grows in and prefers open meadows.

Frankly, I think there may be a lot of myths around some of the lesser-known/grown snowdrop species.  I guess it is natural to assume that the locale where you find a plant represents the optimum growing location but logically that isn't necessarily going to be true.  I think one just has to experiment.  Also, who knows to what extent we have accidentally bred forms of the more common snowdrop species that are well-suited to our climate just by importing them in large neumbers, growing them and allowing them to set seed for a hundred years or more.