Galanthus in April 2014

[Leena]

Snowdrops are now at their best in Finland. The nights are still under zero and the daytime the temperature is above zero, and this year all the snow has gone already. Here are some of my snowdrops now.
Atkinsii
Mrs MacNamara
G.lagodechianus
G.nivalis, smaller
G.nivalis, a little bigger clone

[Leena]

Some more, the first four were planted last summer.
Nameless G.plicatus came from a kind forumist. I bought last summer three yellow snowdrops and Ray Cobb and Wendy's Gold are doing fine, but the flowers of Bill Clark got frozen, and it doesn't flower this year. is it normally earlier than Wendy's Gold?
G.plicatus
Lerinda
Ray Cobb
Wendy's Gold
G.nivalis

[Maggi Young]

Super photos , Leena - good to see you have got sunshine to enjoy the flowers, too. Can you be confident there that the snow is gone for good now, until next winter?

[Leena]

Super photos , Leena - good to see you have got sunshine to enjoy the flowers, too. Can you be confident there that the snow is gone for good now, until next winter?

Thanks Maggi.
It's been now sunny with cold nights, so no more snow, I hope, and it is already April, and even if there is more snow it will melt away soon, but the weather forecast looks promising. This is a very early spring here this year and I love it.

[Rick Goodenough]

Leena,

A terrific show of your drops.  I was particularly keen on the color of your G. 'Wendy's Gold', as some seem to have a bit of a green cast to the yellow on the inners. Yours looks to be pure yellow...very nice. I also wanted to congratulate you on the setting and your photo of the wonderfully full clump of nivalis with the mossy stone...picturesque. Thank you for posting.

[Hagen Engelmann]

Leena, you give us a long month more season.
You have fine plants, we have good memories .

[Leena]

  I was particularly keen on the color of your G. 'Wendy's Gold', as some seem to have a bit of a green cast to the yellow on the inners. Yours looks to be pure yellow...very nice.

Thank you Rick. I had bought that 'Wendy's Gold' dormant  from Dryad Bulbs last summer. I ordered two bulbs and got two bulbs which were both already splitting up, and have now three flowers on them. And the color is pure yellow without green, I am very pleased with these and hope they will multiply also here and perhaps set seeds, too.

[Leena]

Leena, you give us a long month more season.
You have fine plants, we have good memories .

Thank you Hagen, I wish I had much more to show (I have a little more), but in the years to come I'll have more.
I have taken a lot of photos from my snowdrops, it is so nice to look at the photos later and dream of the new season. And photos are also good when I think where to plant new snowdrops.

Many of my old G.nivalis are quite big clumps, they multiply very nicely and I divide them to half every once in a while and plant to new places in the garden. There are also seedlings, but not as much as one would think comparing to the number of the mother plants.

[Alan_b]

I had bought that 'Wendy's Gold' .... and hope they will multiply also here and perhaps set seeds, too.

By all accounts the yellow gene is recessive so if you want yellow seedlings you need to cross with another yellow snowdrop or, presumably, make sure Wendy's gold crosses with itself.

[Leena]

Thanks Alan, I forgot that it needs another yellow to produce yellow offspring. I had planted Bill Clark next to Wendy's Gold, but of course there are other green snowdrops just as close. I don't know if I get seeds this year anyway, because the nights have been so cold, but I'm going to keep an eye on them, it will be interesting to see if there are seeds in spite of the cold.

This Jaquenetta was planted last autumn, does it look right?

[Alan_b]

I've seen a big garden with two big clumps of snowdrops, one Wendy's Gold and the other I'm not sure, possibly Bill Clark.  These are tens of metres away from any other snowdrop yet the few seedlings that have been produced still seem to be green.  Perhaps they prefer not to self pollinate and even Bill (?) and Wendy don't seem to want to get together.

[Leena]

Would Wendy and Ray Cobb make a better couple?

[Brian Ellis]

This Jaquenetta was planted last autumn, does it look right?

Note the spelling Leena (back to Shakespeare's original), it looks fairly 'right' however, the problem with Greatorex hybrids is that they display different markings at different stages of maturity and, as this is newly planted the best we can say is "Probably". 

[Leena]

Thanks Brian. I expected something more ragged looking, this is quite neat and nice, and I'm very happy with this.
I corrected the spelling.

[Ding Dong]

Just watched the excellent Beechgrove Garden, great report from the SRGC Show at Dunblane, also Lady Anne Fraser's garden - Gardeners World could learn a lot from this programme