Snowdrops

Are you a Galanthophile or just like bulbs (Bulbophile?)

Siris I like all bulbs and plants the attraction of the snowdrops to me is that I can have different varieties in flower from September/October right through to March a lot of them in my alpine house providing interest when there is not much else, the more common ones are of course in the open garden. Do you grow many?
How many different ones doe's one need to be a Galanthophile. not sure I like that name you could end up on a police computer if they got carried away.lol
I have between 35/40 different ones so not really in that class ,have nearly that many Hepaticas .
Brian

Beautiful photo Brian ...

I agree with you there Shirley.....I cannot believe you have so many different ones Brian, also Hepaticas!! I have two species of snowdrop and two Hepatica lol

Dotty I don't have the number of different shrubs and herbaceous plants you have so it equals out.

Yes I expect you are right there Brian, I think this is the one we have, I found it last year, never noticed it before, it is flowering now, I put a marker in the ground so I wouldnt dig it up!! I think I might have 3 flowers this year!! will pop a pic on for you to see, if I can get up again off the garden lol

Brian, I have just the common single and the double snowdrop, and 3 different coloured Hepaticas (probably the same species) but Iris germanicas 65+ different colours, must stop collecting, but that's addiction for you!

Siris
I had looked back at your profile and realized I had seen before that you are well into Irises, I love the Iris and have some dwarf species one of my favourite is Iris Gracilipes in the blue form I was attracted to it many years ago after reading Kingdom Wards description of finding it growing wild in China, he described it at a distance akin to an English Bluebell wood

Those plant hunters were so obsessed, fancy being the first Europeans to see some of those sights!

Once the collection bug hits you.......heaven help you!!

Dotty I do like to grow collections of plants but have found that when you have a number of the same species in pots as I do they are more prone disease and pests and require checking on often.

I do agree with you there, have just bought 2 pots of snowdrops to add to my meagre collection... elwesii !!£6.00 for 10 bulbs.......was that expensive or not?

Siris
there are quite a few present day plant hunters collecting previously unseen plants and bringing them into cultivation.

Dotty hardly expensive, I take it they are pot grown you should be able to slip them out of there pots and start two new colonies/Clumps.

Hope present-day plant hunters don't deplete the wild or are conserving at risk plants.

Siris
Often they are collecting seed ,they mostly have to have licences from the country they are collecting in, and of course import ones into the UK .
When I first became interested in growing collected seed in the 1960s/70s often it was quite organised and several people would go to the region that was of interest when the plants were in flower put markers on the plants and then mark the location on maps another group would return to the area in late summer to collect the seed sounds easy but often goats or sheep would have got there first, I remember reading on one occasion an area revisited had suffered a flash flood and all the vegetation had been washed away.
They do have the advantage of electronic markers that bleep when a collector is near these days .
I can just visualise some one climbing a mountain only to find they are following a goat that had swallowed a marker lol

I love your sense of humour Brian.......and yes the Snowdrops were in pots, all planted up now.

Upwardly mobil goats!

The 'V' on the inner petals looks like the one I was trying to ID. Its still a puzzle why you have a very sharp 'V' on the one in your blog and I cannot see if these or the one in the blog has the frilled inner petal. I will have to wait till next year to scrutinize them more carefully.