Snowdrop varieties

My favourite time of year - naturally. All of my snowdrops are blooming and some sunshine at the weekend opened up their little blooms which was just so nice to see.
This is good old nivalis which is hard to beat.

This one is Maidwell L with a beautiful solid green inner petal

A double called Dionysis

A yellow form of Nivalis

A species called woronowii

Augustus - a really special plant with those crinkled petals - really unique.

Lady Elphinstone which is supposed to be yellow but can revert to green for a couple of years before it settles down

Magnet - after rain!

Nivalis flore pleno

Cedric's Profile

Viridapice

Galantophile,
thank you for sharing your beauties!

They all have their charms, but the 'good old nivalis' is indeed hard to beat!
It has these superior proportions and elegance, rare mixture of nobility and humbleness, small but great in its tender beauty and braveness to bloom in a not so friendly period of the year. I love them too!

a baby Galanthus nivalis

They are wonderful to see...can't wait until the snow/ice melt enough for mine. I only have the nivalis...had no idea there so many. thanks for posting.

Always great to see your plants at this time of year Ann! They're all beauties.

Oh, oh, oh! Wonderful pictures!! Thank you for sharing them with us!

Beauties! Magnet is lovely, I like the extra long petals, so elegant!

How many named varieties do you have Galanth?

I have 15 named forms - I did have more but have lost a few. I have about 8 species too. There are about 500 varieties so I have a way to go! Some of my un-named ones are every bit as special to me as the named ones as they are all so different too.

Tthat is interesting because it seems to me they look so much alike. I don't think I would be able to tell them apart.

Do you hope to get most of them? I guess they can take up less space than some, these little hobbies can be addictive! As you may know.......

My Snowdrops are filling out nicely now, the Acacia in front is also full of flower, I got some pics but I'm waiting for some sun! It threatens to shine somewhere up to midday, then turns even more damp and dark. I keep thinking I will be able to get out to do something, then it goes downhill.

The differences are very subtle but some of them are amazing and very expensive! Some really rare and unusual ones go for around £50 - £100 per bulb!
I still have some room in my garden for a few more.... But they get planted out - not cossetted! And yes I am well and truly addicted :) There are worse things!
Saw some of the sun today but more rain expected - but at least it's not snow!

I was just looking at Broadleigh Bulbs, some they have are £10 each, there's three that look very similar, £4-6, I have one that looks so close. It must be down to the finer differences, size of flowers and leaves, the green marks are only slightly less on mine than Magnet but the petals are long, £4 for that, I think I will stick with my look alike!

There are some very good specialist nurseries that sell reasonably priced named forms. But as you say for the differences, well if you have "ordinary" elswesii which can be very variable and nivalis you can't really go wrong!

Would like to share some more pictures of my snowdrops

Galanthus nivalis

Galanthus ikarea

A different variety of the G. ikarea

G.ikarea

This one decided to turn up its face ! Probably because its longing for a little sun!

i would like to see a picture of that 100 (dollar) ? one.

Very nice pictures of your snowdrops Boniton. That upward facing one is cute.

One bulb called Diggory went for £52 on EBay the other day!

Boniton... it's a long story, but basically I bought G. ikariae bulbs in the fall of 2005, thinking there was little chance they'd make it through the winter, because the writer of a classic American book on bulbs, who gardened in zone 7a said they weren't hardy for her. Well, mine came up last spring and bloomed. i was SO smug, and published about it on my garden blog, but I always kind of wondered why I (in 5a) could grow them. Then this winter I was doodling around on the Scottish Rock Garden Club site, and found a discussion about G. ikariae by a real expert, and he said almost all the ikariae in commerce is really G. woronowii; the foliage is similar but the green marks on woronowii are small, usually heart shaped, with a prominent notch in the petals right in the middle of the blotch... just like my supposed ikariae. Woronowii comes from much further north than ikariae, so is hardier. Here is a picture of my "ikariae", now woronowii from last spring. Apparently woronowii has even naturalized in Great Britain. The green marks on ikariae are much larger, looking to me like a molar tooth broken off half-way down the roots.
Don

Thanks Galantophil

Zonedenial, thank you for the interesting.
I suppose that my 'ikarea' must also be woronowii ?
In my second pict. it shows a different marking on the petals

Found a picture of ikarea on the web.
It looks very similar to me like yours and mine. Perhaps I'm missing a subtle difference in detail.
Difficult to compare when one cannot see the pictures side by side.

home.tiscali.be/veen.helleborus/galanthus.htm

Found more info about the differences on a Belgian site:
I translate what it says:

'The green markings on the inner side of the flower petals of ikarea are at least half of the petal. These markings are much smaller with woronowii.'
(this is the same what you found, only difference that it talks about the inside of the petals)

'The foliage of ikarea is darker than that of the woronowii which has bright green leaves'.

I find that the leaves my ikarea (wolonowii ?) are very bright green.
So I'm still doubting...
But at the end it doesn't really matter to me whether its one or the other.
I like them!

http://www.floralimages.co.uk/pgalanworon.htm

Another link where they consider wolonowii the same as ikarea.

sorry, the first link doesn't seem to work.
I'll try again:
http://images.google.be/imgres?imgurl=http://home.tiscali.be/veen.helleborus/galanthus/Gpuseyft.JPG&imgrefurl=http://home.tiscali.be/veen.helleborus/galanthus.htm&h=482&w=567&sz=74&hl=nl&start=1&tbnid=BRMdX7J94AtJOM:&tbnh=114&tbnw=134&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgalan

I can see the difference in the marks comparing both ikarea to the one on the Belgian site. As zonedenial said the marks look like a molar tooth, both sides being joined in the middle with a broad band. On ikarea the marks look like two triangles barely touching in the centre.

bonitin you can compare them side by side, you can do it even with the enlarged image. Make sure the page is on the smaller size and not enlarged to the full, then drag the sides with your pointer which will make a double ended arrow when you put it on the edges of the page. Do it with both sides to one edge to fill half the page, then minimize the page, bring up your other pic and do the same. Once you have both to a different side you can then bring them both on the same page side by side.

It took me some time but now I managed to see the pictures side by side!
Thank you for this computer lesson, Wallaby!
They are indeed different!

I don't know where my head was this morning, because what i wrote earlier makes no sense:

""'The foliage of ikarea is darker than that of the woronowii which has bright green leaves'.

I find that the leaves of my ikarea (wolonowii ?) are very bright green.
So I'm still doubting...""

Of course it means that my 'ikarea' are really the wolonowii!!
Sorry for this confusion!


A G.nivalis followed the example of the previous G.wolonowii(not ikarea) and decided to change its view on the world. Picture of today (another dull rainy grizzled on)

Bonitin: I think the statement about the green mark on the inside of the petals should read ON the INSIDE petals (that is, the three inner petals that make up the tube of the flower). Here is a link to the SRGC site... go to the forums, then to bulbs. This is the most amazing site if you like snowdrops: there are something like 2000 messages already this spring discussing snowdrops, with endless pictures. Buried somewhere in there is the discussion about woronowii vs. ikariae, showing comparative pictures.

http://www.srgc.org.uk/index.html

They have changed to a new forum so they may be split here's some links

http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=266.0

http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=209.0

http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=163.0


http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=39.0

Snowdrop links on the old forum

http://www.srgc.org.uk/discus/messages/8/11.html?1114297185

interesting sites Wallaby about "galanthophiles".........

Zonedenial, you must be right!
Thanks wallaby for the links, it's very tempting to go through all of them, but I would certainly need a whole day for that.

I've read some of the posts in the first site, and one of the members mentions he will treat his precious and very pricey bulbs with pesticide and fungicide every 10 days.
i think I wouldn't want to have bulbs that are so vulnerable for all kinds of pests. I wouldn't find it worth the trouble money and most important the pollution of nature and harm caused to its creatures by such treatments.