Galanthus February 2008

[Janette]

Hi John, Maybe those snowdrops were already tucked up here in the alpine house when you were in Suffolk! Yes I grow many alpines, hellebores, which I select and cross myself, orchids and a whole host of other things in between! If it grows - Ill try it. regards Janette

[mark smyth]

A green tipped woronowii? Did it come from the garden centre also?

There are only two other green tipped woronowii that I know of. One is badly virused. I found some last year but this year they are all normal

[Janette]

Yes Mark it is woronowii and yes also from the garden centre as nivalis!

[Anthony Darby]

T-shirt weather today with hover flies, drone flies and the odd honey bee buzzing around. Here's
Galanthus elwesii 'Whitalii';
G. nivalis 'Hololeucus';
G. n. 'Viridapice';
G. n. 'Brian Spence' and next to my thumb nail;
G. plicatus 'Castle Green'
G. p. 'Wendy's Gold';
G. 'Tubby Merlin' and
G. 'Little Ben'.

[David Nicholson]

Day off?

[Hagen Engelmann]

Hello Janette, welcome here. Very nice pictures. But I belief not one is a G. nivalis. A mix of G. elwesii and G. woronowii. A G. nivalis with whole green inner tepales is very rare.

[Anthony Darby]

Day off?

Yup. Kids got last Monday and Tuesday off. I get today.

[David Nicholson]

Bit of peace and quiet then

[Maggi Young]

Bit of peace and quiet then

I doubt it, doesn't he still have the builders in?

[Maggi Young]

Hagen, I think Janette was saying the plants were wrongly  labelled as nivalis in the garden centre, not that they ARE nivalis

[Anthony Darby]

Bit of peace and quiet then

I doubt it, doesn't he still have the builders in?

Curiously the only workman in until 3.30 p.m. was the plasterer. I made him and I (and Vivienne because she popped home) a couple of bacon butties each (or as the kids at my school would say "piece on bacon"). I'd already wandered down to walk the children home at 3. We then had five working until nearly 7.30 p.m.

I spent the day checking cyp pots and generally removing all the dead growth from around the garden. I am going to dig out the border under the front house wall with a view to working it like Mark's: i.e. snowdrops in the spring and a riot of colour in the summer. Will have to get an instruction sheet from Mark though.

[Janette]

Yes indeed all were labelled as nivalis, but are in fact elwesii and woronowii. None were nivalis, which of course I knew when I bought them How I wonder can that happen in so called cultivated stock? janette

[Anthony Darby]

How I wonder can that happen in so called cultivated stock? janette

They say a little knowledge can be dangerous and, clearly, these people have little knowledge. I suspect they don't care either? An extreme case comes to mind. I used to run a pets club at school and once went to a greengrocer's shop not far from the school that also sold dried food and pet food. I needed food for the gerbils and spotted a sack of the mixed seeds etc. marked 'Hamster/gerbil mix'. It was crawling with Australian Spider beetles and their larvae. I pointed this out and the bag was hastily removed. A week later the bag and its lively inhabitants was back in the same place.

[Alan_b]

A few years ago I bought some early flowering elwesii at an RHS show in London that the vendor insisted were nivalis because "the bulbs weren't big enough to be elwesii". 

[art600]

Antony

What a wonderful selection.

I am interested to know if you prepared the rock garden in any special way to accomodate the Galanthus.  When growing in pots do you have a special mixture - they are obviously thriving.