Friday Fabulous Flower - Snow Drops

 

In the what's first-to-flower-sweepstakes the clear winner is snowdrops.  When the last of the snow cover melted away the flower buds were already showing a bit of white, and a week of above freezing high temperatures did the trick and this clump opened on the 28th of February.  Clumps of this little bulb will last for years and slowly increase in number of bulbs flowering.  This species, probably Galanthus nivalis, only grows 3 to 6" tall.  They pop up in several places in our gardens.  They are ever so cheerful in the easly spring, and prompted TPP to finish transcribing dates from his flowering log into the database and then adding a 2021 column and printing out a new pad for this season.  Clearly a harbinger of spring.  Enjoy. 

Friday Fabulous Flowers - Snow drops

Here and there around our gardens are little clumps of early spring flowers, the ones that pop up and bloom anytime the temperature gets above freezing. The weather has be unsettled of late, rain and wind, so generally nasty.  How TPP managed to get a non-blurry image with the wind blowing except maybe taking the shot in between gusts.  So these little bulbs and flower stalks are only a few inches tall, but after a longish winter, they are very cheerful.  Freezing and even some late snow don't seem to bother them at all.

Friday Fabulous Flower - snow drops

And second place goes to snow drops (Galanthus nivalis) just two days later than the witch hazels.  The fairly long snow cover of this winter always gets snow drops off to a fairly early start.  These little bulbs are not very flashy, but they sure are cheerful after a long winter.  If you have a garden you should stick in clumps of these bulbs just every where.  Clumps sometimes surprise us arising in places where they planted themselves.  This clump only started as one or two stalks, and now it consists of a couple of dozen bulbs.