April 2012 in the Northern Hemisphere

[Shadylanejewel]

Delphinium nudicaule
Trillium erectum red
Trillium sulcatum

[Lesley Cox]

Lovely trilliums Julie and I haven't seen D. nudicaule for several years so that's a treat too.

Razvan, how big a plant is Lathyrus sylvaticus? It has lovely colour. Is it a climber? And I like your Muscari, pretending to be an Arisaema with a blue spadix.

[johnw]

Every spring ladies come round the door selling little bouquets of Epigaea repens. At a friend's today and I wonder where this large-flowered white was found. We'll never know unfortunately.

The fragrance is incredible.

johnw

[johnw]

Jeffersonia diphylla dubia growing in a nasty spot in the garden.

johnw

[WimB]

Wonderful plants, John!

In flower here today:

Arisaema griffithii
Fritillaria persica 'Ivory bells'
Iris 'Rabbit's Foot'
Pinguicula corsica
Primula szechuanica
and Tulipa clusiana 'Peppermint Stick' (beaten down by the rain, hail and wind of the last week!)

[Tim Ingram]

That Epigaea almost looks good enough to eat John! Here some of the woodland plantings are coming on. Several woodland species coming into their own at the moment:-

The Doronicum (caucasicum?) is always a nice surprise early in the season, and here is planted with cyclamen and Corydalis temulifolia 'Chocolate Stars'.

Nearby is another good combination, Tiarella cordifolia and Primula 'Strong Bear' (curious name for a very good deep blue double).

The finest wood anemone in the garden, A. nemorosa 'Allenii'. This is only just beginning to flower and has very large, beautifully soft-blue flowers, though perhaps not best placed under a magnolia that has just finished flowering!

[johnw]

Tim  - Your Tiarella-Primula combination is quite special.

johnw

[johnw]

Nice to see P. sechuanica Wim.

johnw

[Hagen Engelmann]

No flower, only foliage
but I hope you will like this pic too:
Rheum palmatum - like a black dragon.

[ruweiss]

Flowering now:

Chaenomeles japonica
Prunus tenella
015
Frit. pallidiflora
Frit. pallidiflora 1
Frit.meleagris
002
Iberis spec.
Silene sachalinesis

[Paul T]

Hagan,

I love the black dragon description.  Very apt.    They look more like one of those dark begonias, but then I've never seen Rheum in the flesh.

Rudi,

Great frits!!  Love the pallidiflora.

[Hans A.]

Hans,

I have Canarina canariensis in flower (just opened) here in the southern hemisphere as well.    Are the 3 colours separate plants?  Mine is somewhere between the 2 paler ones, solid pale orange with darker veins, a bit darker than the single pic which I'm assuming is the parent.

Thanks Lesley and Paul - the different colours grow on different plants which are all seedlings from my first plant which I lost. Those seedlings appeared all near the area where the parent plant was. As I have been told Canarina is selfsterile so I never tried to sow any seeds - obviously this information was wrong.

[cohan]

Too many beauties to comment on!
but, Julie- love the Trilliums, and great colour on that Delphinium  

Hagen, fantastic Rheum

Oleg- I wont say it never happens or never could, but generally my soil is frozen solid long before  there is lasting snow.. I have some Jovibarba and Semps which started growing almost immediately after the snow melted, but they are at the top of a steeply sloped bed, in the sun, and Corydalis solida grows when the soil must be very cold, also very soon after the snow goes, but most other things take some time- I have some Crocus and Galanthus just planted last fall- that bed was bare of snow for about 3 weeks before they just barely started to emerge in the last couple days- although much of those 3 weeks was cold..

Nothing in flower yet in my yard - some Petasites sagittatus in the wild on the farm are getting very close- maybe open now after last two very warm days.. but of course other places in Canada   (parts of East and West are much much warmer than here- zone 5, even 8 compared to ) even in Calgary not far away, Lori has had flowers for weeks already.. outside the city is always slower, and we are a touch colder than Calgary, and much of my property is shady in winter, so it warms up more slowly. I have Cory solida about 2 inches tall, so that will be the first thing!

[Lesley Cox]

Lovely things there, especially the epigaea and the rheum and I like the combination of deep blue primula and limey tiarella. I could do the same with a heuchera.

[Lesley Cox]

As I have been told Canarina is selfsterile so I never tried to sow any seeds - obviously this information was wrong.

As has been noted elsewhere today, some plants just don't know how to read and so behave in ways contrary to what the books say about them.