Galanthus January 2011

[KentGardener]

Latest update from John Grimshaw

http://johngrimshawsgardendiary.blogspot.com/

Always worth a read - but this entry definitely so for Galanthophiles.  

[art600]

[quote author=Brian Ellis link=topic=6443.msg181159#msg181159 date= North Star, a seedling from John Sales, who says:
"It is like a very early 'Lady Beatrix Stanley' but more star shaped.  Not a tidy flower but extremely floriferous and increases rapidly" certainly it is very skew whiff!
[/quote]

Why would you want to grow this when Lady Beatrix Stanley is so much better - and I find it a good doer 

[johnw]

G. nivalis ssp. imperati (ex Dr. Fischer 1984).

But not, presumably, the green-tipped one in the background.

No Alan, that green-tipped one is several rows over. It's a green-tipped elwesii a friend found several years ago.

johnw

[Brian Ellis]

Why would you want to grow this when Lady Beatrix Stanley is so much better - and I find it a good doer 

Well Art, its called learning by experience

[art600]

I hope it was a gift. 

[johnw]

A nice collection there Brian.  It is amazing what great contrast you have in some of the markings compared to here.  This year the yellowish inners of some are decidedly green as I note in your Fieldgate Prelude and John Gray. I will try to take a shot of the latter for comparison.

Here are two 2009 shots of what was labelled as Fieldgate Prelude at Covertside. Any idea what it might possibly be?  I'm sure Jo must have seen this one just at the edge of the wall by the patio at the rear of the house. You can see that the marking is broken up in the flower centre bottom.

johnw   - -7c at 12:30.

[Brian Ellis]

It is amazing what great contrast you have in some of the markings compared to here.  This year the yellowish inners of some are decidedly green as I note in your Fieldgate Prelude and John Gray.

Here are two 2009 shots of what was labelled as Fieldgate Prelude at Covertside. Any idea what it might possibly be?  

I think that it is probably Fieldgate Prelude!  As we have seen with Sutton Courtenay earlier on this thread, the markings do differ slightly depending on growing conditions, and I would think probably maturity of the bulb, perhaps someone else has found this to be the case too? 

[Alan_b]

Any other suggestions?

My personal opinion is that you cannot "re-name" a snowdrop with a wrong or lost label unless the list of possible suspects is small and unambiguous.  For example, I have a small plicate snowdrop in a pot with a lost label.  Given the contents of the pots in that area I think it is probably Colossus.  When it gets big enough to flower I will observe the flower and the flowering time and the eventual size of the leaves and if these all match with Colossus it will probably get labelled "Colossus ?".  I can do this because I don't own anything else for which Colossus could easily be mistaken.  I now write on the actual pots with a paint marker to prevent this sort of problem recurring.   

[art600]

Thanks Alan

I think it is a very nice snowdrop with a good strong flower and potential to increase well.  Whatever it is, I am very pleased to have it.

[Diane Clement]

Does anyone have any information about this name - how does it differ from the species?  Sorry I couldn't get the flower to open  
Galanthus fosteri antepensis (ex Norman Stevens)

[Diane Clement]

This is a tiny species compared to the last one.  The right hand flower has got damage on the tips, I think due to frost when it was emerging
Galanthus gracilis ex JJA

[ian mcenery]

Hi Diane here is the same plant with the flower open was taken about 2/3 weeks ago. Mine tried to open at the end of November so I took this to be an autumn flowering form as my other fosteri were barely showing at all   Will have to ask Norman about it but the ssp name does sound a bit like a latinised location

[Hans J]

Hello Diane ,

this name ( G. fosteri v. antepensis ) is descriptet from N.Zeybek and E.Sauer
Please look in the Galanthus book from A.Davis ( page 159 )
This plants was found in the Gaziantep area .

I hope this helps a bit
Hans

[Martin Baxendale]

This was posted first in the Moan Moan Moan thread but I'm putting it here as well because if my Daily Mail Weekend Magazine article on snowdrops is stumbled across by any fellow snowdrop enthusiasts, and if the hacks on the magazine have done to it what they seem to want to do to it, then I'd like my snowdrop growing friends to know how it came to be the god-awful mess that it may unfortunately turn out to be:

Well that's the last time I'll write anything for the Daily Mail Weekend Magazine! 

Sent my snowdrops feature in only to have some hack of an 'assistant editor' add on a rewritten (and factually incorrect) intro and ending to make it more in keeping with the Daily Mail style. I've since been told by someone else who's written for the Daily Mail that this is what they tend to do - take your copy and turn it into a flowery hack job.

My intro was this:

The current craze in horticultural circles for snowdrops, or galanthus to give them their botanical name, is sometimes compared to the madness of Tulip Mania in seventeenth century Holland, due to the incredibly high prices that bulbs of the newest and rarest varieties can sell for at auction.

I then went on to write, very topically, about the incredibly high prices snowdrops sell for at auction before writing generally about snowdrops, which to buy to start a collection, where to buy them, where to see them, how to grow them, etc. The bulk of my feature has been left as I wrote it and is I feel reasonably well written (since I've been writing for over 30 years, including for various gardening mags and half a dozen gardening books) apart from the stupid intro and ending tagged on. I re-wrote these to correct the inaccuracies and try to make it less rubbish, but god knows if they'll take any notice! Bear in mind this feature is to appear on 5th Feb when the snowdrop season is well underway, so the timing mistake was the first thing I corrected. Anyway, here is the intro they wanted to tag onto the top of the article:


  By Martin Baxendale

         With a little bit of luck, and if our gardens don't get buried under another thick layer of snow,  we should soon be getting a glimpse of what some people call milk flowers. By that I mean snowdrops, nature's own white carpet, celebrated as a very early and - given the harsh weather -  optimistic sign of spring. One minute the ground is hard and unyielding,  or so it seems;  the next, Galanthus (to give them their botanical name)  are peeping through all over the place, later to be outshone by the equally ubiquitous yellow daffodil.
          But we shouldn't take snowdrops for granted, as there is a current craze in horticultural circles for some of the newest and rarest varieties, and big money is being paid for single flowers.    It is being compared to the madness of Tulip Mania in 17th century Holland, when  just one bulb would sell for ten times a craftsman's yearly wage.

And this is the ending they wanted to tag on:

So when you see the first snowdrops of spring poking through this month, welcome them as something more than nature's first stirrings of the gardening year. Because for some people they are, after all, an investment in the future - in more ways than one.

Remember, this is to be published 5th Feb, and I told them when the snowdrop season starts, peaks and ends. The sound you can hear is me tearing my hair out.

[rob krejzl]

I thought snow was "nature's own white carpet". Hope they paid well.