The ebay season begins....... ( includes ikariae/ woronowii comparisons)

[mark smyth]

I only repeated how I was told to grow this snowdrop. Have you found yellow plicatus in 'your' woods?

[ichristie]

Hi Mark, yes I found one small clums some time ago looks like G plicatus Wendys gold but I will look at it again when it flowers this year. I visited the Castle last week and found quite a few G. plicatus and some definate Hybrids beween G plicatus and G nivalis. I send a picture of one which I call Ramsay 1 this is just a holding name. I am sure that we all have different gardens and for me Galanthus plicatus will not grow in a wet peaty area whilst G nivalis grows in running water I saw this at brechin this week, cheers Ian.

[jamouatt]

The Cambridgeshire yellow plicatus originated on a chalk sub soil which is no way acidic.

[mark smyth]

Ian your find looks very like 'Robin Hood' and 'Little John' both are plicatus hybrids.

This is 'Little John'

[Hagen Engelmann]

Could it be Ian found LADY MARIAN?? I mean it`s a nice one with a short and round ovarium.

[mark smyth]

'Maid Marian' is already a named snowdrop

[KentGardener]

Could it be Ian found LADY MARIAN?? I mean it`s a nice one with a short and round ovarium.

 

  

[Hagen Engelmann]

Mark, yes you have the advantage of the language, but.....
Maid Marian is only a synonym of your LITTLE JOHN, it means the name is free

[ichristie]

Hi all, I thank you for your suggested name but as I have just found this hybrid it is only correct to watch it for the next couple of years, one thing for sure I intend to go back to this site where I have seen other snowdrops which are flowering and look very interesting to me. I do have to consider what we have around already but these hybrid snowdrops should not go un-noticed so to speak all have had no input from man and have a great history which I intend to write up sometime. I will post some more pictures when possible,  cheers Ian the Christie kind.

[mark smyth]

Hagan there is an green tipped elwesii called 'Maid Marian'

[Maggi Young]

What I don't think many of you may realise is that, whereas the snowdrops in other parts of the country, Republic of Irleand etc. may be getting into their Spring Swing, so to speak.... up here in Scotland the season is  very much just beginning..... thus the 'drops Ian is seeing now are, for us, quite different because they are so early.
 
The more I hear about these so-called "special" snowdrops, whether or not they are going for a fortune on Ebay, or are desperately tended by loving and experienced growers, for whom they still weaken and die at a rate of knots, the more I think the whole thing of galanthophilia is the daftest of fashions.

I would rather have a snowdrop which had the constitution of an ox and would grow in any soil and make a thousand gardeners happy than one of these unstable, irregular, weakly, miffy "rareties .....especally given the number that seem to be wrongly named, supposing one does obtain them.
Ah, and the naming....... yes, that's an other craziness.....
this plant is named 'Bloggs', we're told
.....oh, but it looks wrong
... I have 'Bloggs' from Bloggs himself
.... so do I but it is different
..... then a plant, generally acclaimed as looking like 'Bloggs' appears.
.... oh,it must be 'Bloggs'
...... but it can't be 'Bloggs' there is no provenance of that
..... then it just looks like 'Bloggs' then, and is thus not worthy of a name
- but if there is so much trouble about 'Bloggs' and if Bloogs lookalikes are rife, then why was 'Bloggs' ever a good subject for naming in the first place?
The whole thing is lunacy, I tell you.

[Anthony Darby]

I've got the stake, the rope and the wood. Who's got the matches?

[ichristie]

Dear Maggie, you are totally right we are indeed all as mad as hatters ( the hats with snowdrops on them) but this is what keeps us sane on a cold driech day to see these wee white flowers with geen bits in the middle opening their delicate bells it is just fantastic. I am happy to be as mad as you (dare I say) and all the rest of the people who post on this wonderful forum more more please,  cheers Ian the Christie kind.

[mark smyth]

Point taken Maggi. An early flowering Scottish snowdrop could be a November or December flowerer here or in southern England. Bulbs should be sent to gardens around the country to find out when it flowers elsewhere. If it does flower in the autumn it cant be confused with  a lookalike snowdrop that flowers much later much the same as 'Castlegar' wouldnt be special if it flowered in the main season. It would be dismissed as just another snowdrop. With up to 1000 named snowdrops a new find has to be very special - virescent, striped, yellow, orange, palest pink, flushed green. Some of the well known lurkers sould join in for a change. Maybe they can explain much better

[Maggi Young]

Mark, it'd have to be some red hot story to convince me that it is worth getting hysterical over a plant with the constitution of a dying duck..... even if they are different, if they have  no strength to survive, even in the care of experts, what's the point?  And it seems that so many of these "special snowies2 have just this problem. Why not just go out into the woods and just enjoy the pretty little flowers??... which President Ian, to a large extent, does...he's just out enjoying the variety that nature brings... I'd bet a weekly chocolate allowance, however, that you will never see President Ian introduce a sickly plant!