Galanthus in November 2011

[Tony Willis]

Ian my 'Barnes' were nearly over when I went away almost two weeks ago.They seemed very early this year.

[Pauli]

Hello,

here a very late flowering type og reginae-olgae. I grow it in a buölb frame, were some flowers are still fresh at Christmas! Very vigorous and completly hardy here in Austria!

If anybody is interested in a swap, I am looking for a true peshmenii or an early flowering elwesii!

[ian mcenery]

Ian my 'Barnes' were nearly over when I went away almost two weeks ago.They seemed very early this year.

Tony nothing seems to be making sense here either I have Three Ships just starting to flower over a month before it usually does?

[Brian Ellis]

I'm pleased your Barnes are now in flower Ian, I thought I was the only one who hadn't had it in flower until now!

[johnw]

This has been an abysmal Remembrance Day holiday, still the crowds at outdoor services have braved the weather.  The wind is howling here, a Tropical Storm has teamed up with a low pressure from the west and we are to get over 100mm of rain. It has been coming down horizontally for 12 hours now and the sky is pitch dark, so much so we have had all the lights on since daybreak.

John - You must have a tremendous show there with those all those reginae-olgaes. Does you ground freeze solidly in the winter there in Pennsylvania?  Sound as if you have much the same "summer" as we have had.

Pauli - Can you tell us something of the climate in Linz?  Your clump of r-o's are a delight.

The reginae-olgae strangely set seed reliably in the greenhouse whereas the nivalis and elwesii abort.

johnw    - +17c

[Alan_b]

... we are to get over 100mm of rain.

Send some over here please.  The last I heard we need 170mm of rain to bring the soil back to normal levels of hydration.  The total rainfall for the whole year until the end of October (as recorded by the Botanic Garden) is 303 mm

[Anthony Darby]

303mm? That would only get a foot wet!

[Pauli]

John,

The climate in Linz could be called temperate - cold. Winters usually have lows around -15C, altough 20 years ago lows under -20C were not uncommon. In winter we have usually some weeks with subzero temperatures. We have snow, but no reliable permanent snow cover!

Summers are warm, with a few days above 30C.
Rain should fall the year round with about 800mm precipitation a year. This year is a very dry one - I still have to water my autumn flowering bulbs. Today morning -1C, a sunny day is announced with highs around 10C.

[Brian Ellis]

... we are to get over 100mm of rain.

Send some over here please.  The last I heard we need 170mm of rain to bring the soil back to normal levels of hydration.  The total rainfall for the whole year until the end of October (as recorded by the Botanic Garden) is 303 mm

We are like Alan, only 359mm for the whole year and of that 228mm since May.  Added to that we had 242.9hrs of sunshine in May (123% of average figures) and 216.3 hrs (115% of average figures in June).

[johnw]

John,

The climate in Linz could be called temperate - cold. Winters usually have lows around -15C, altough 20 years ago lows under -20C were not uncommon. In winter we have usually some weeks with subzero temperatures. We have snow, but no reliable permanent snow cover!

Summers are warm, with a few days above 30C.
Rain should fall the year round with about 800mm precipitation a year. This year is a very dry one - I still have to water my autumn flowering bulbs. Today morning -1C, a sunny day is announced with highs around 10C.

Thanks Herbert.  While our winters are comparable our annual precipitation is close 1400mm.  We do have a couple of summer days to 30/31c but nights are cool.  Summer humidity is between 85 and 91%, sun and fog fight it out all summer long.

Sounds as if we have to grow successive generations of r-os to get good do-ers.

johnw 

[Tony Willis]

... we are to get over 100mm of rain.

Send some over here please.  The last I heard we need 170mm of rain to bring the soil back to normal levels of hydration.  The total rainfall for the whole year until the end of October (as recorded by the Botanic Garden) is 303 mm

We got more than that in October alone,the garden is a bog!

[steve owen]

Remembrance Day is my first roll-call day of the snowdrop season. In 2010 I had 85 snowdrop varieties up by 11 November, this year it's 80.  So the seasonal vagaries of temperature and rainfall don't seem to have affected the big picture, although that masks oddities such as the non-appearance so far of Donald Sims Early or Three Ships. That could be due to the fact that these two and many others were repotted in the summer as part of the great lattice project; maybe that disturbance has held them back a little. I guess if I'd been dunked in strong disinfectant and fungicide for three days I'd be a bit cautious of poking my nose up above ground! 

[Sean Fox]

80 showing already!

For me this year things are fairly early. Barnes has flowered and well over, it was flowering by early October. Peter Gatehouse is in full bloom and has been for over a week, and by the looks of it, Three Ships won't be far behind. Plenty of others poking through too.

[Brian Ellis]

I like the idea of a roll call on Remembrance Day Steve, I shall adopt this for the future

[steve owen]

Brian

Unexpected absentees get Defaulters Parade.