Snowdrops and the Disappearing Snow
It was 14c this afternoon in Toronto, just what was needed to open up the flowers of a couple of well established clumps of Galanthus elwesii.
I'm curious about the whole Galanthophile thing, and inspired by the photo spread in the February Gardens Illustrated, I got on my knees and checked my plants to see if there was any variance in the marking on my snowdrops.
I was surprised to find that there were in fact some difference in the markings and have selected three examples in these photographs. I find this interesting, but can't say that I'm carried away by Galanthophilism, after all many plants show variance and Nature loves to experiment with this tendency. Finally I like snowdrops en masse, although the individual flowers are great subjects for micro photography.
Comments
It is to my shame that I once fell asleep during a Galanthus lecture. A countless array of jam jars holding single specimens were being explained in minute and interminable detail....zzzz!
Do snowdrops have seeds?
Maybe a could find a Grumpy look-alike amongst my G. elwesii ?
Glad we agree on that. I plan to move some of my Snowdrops to create a carpet under a little Magnolia stellata later this Spring.
And like you, I often find Horticultural speakers a little hard to take. I find myself looking at the "slide list", not so much to see what interesting plants may be discussed, but to see how long the talk is likely to be.
Yes, Snowdrops do set seed, they also produce small bulbs from the original plant and reproduce that way.
The exception are the double flowers which are too congested to set seed, but they too bulk up quite nicely from the production of bulblets.