Have you had a good look at your snowdrops?

very interesting, thanks SG, i shall go out to look at mine now!!
i got a few more the other day, £5 for 5 pots but in each pot were 4 or 5 flowering snowdrops.

Me, too! Going out to have a real close look.
How interesting!

We do take plants for granted. I look at mine very differently since joining goy. I believe we have a couple of Galanthophile members so we might find out more.

I also never took any notice of the differences until joining Goy, now you`ve spurred me on so its back outside to take shots of mine whilst they are in flower..
Great blog Scotsgran...

They are all beautiful, I love the close up pictures Goyers put on here.

Very interesting

Very interesting blog...you have managed to help me identify the lonely little snowdrop which has appeared in my garden this spring.
I will pay more attention of I have anymore appear :)

If you look at that last snowdrop, Scotsgran, you will notice that the leaves are much broader and more 'grey' than with the other two. Also there is a fold or pleat down the center of it. This indicates that it is Galanthus plicatus rather than G. nivalis.
Whilst out on a walk a few days ago, Mg and myself noted some clumps of G. nivalis on an old dump. We inspected them and found variation in the flowers of each clump.

Oh they are lovely and so amazingly different. Never really looked into the centre of the flowers like that before, aren't they beautiful.

Unfortunately none of my snowdrop bulbs have shown even a leaf :( Oh well better luck next year eh.

Very interesting blog. Not something I would ever have noticed.

Scotsgran this has really shown just how little notice I have taken of the my snowdrops, so I shall have a good close look at them in the morning. You`ve captured the detail of them very well, thank you.

I'm pleased you are all happy to look at the snowdrops with me. Samjp, last year for some strange reason we had a lot fewer snowdrops but they are all back again this year. It will likely be something to do with the weather.
Thank you Bb I went looking for the G.plicatus and found it on the website of the Alpine Garden Society. I had noticed that the leaves were very different from my 'common' ones. On Judysnowdrops I found what I thought was a good match Gracilis 'Yamanlar' which is described as having twisted leaves and I had thought that might be a possibility. There are lots of different ones. I guess keeping them separate is going to be difficult.
Which snowdrop did you find Scottish? Its lovely to be able to share information with you. I'll look forward to seeing your snowdrop flowers too Linclass.
I had a look through the goypedia - A-z at the snowdrops others grow and there are a few different ones.

Well Scot. I am very jealous!! I purchased 100 double flowering snowdrops(in the green)+ 50 free, from Tweedbank bulbs, so plenty to spread through the border, but not one double has re-flowered, in fact I should have had ones very similar to your stranger, isnt it beautiful? Did you know that rare snowdrops are selling on e.bay for a really extortionate, you might just have a winner there!! I am going to look at the website that Bjs. told you about now.

I don't think it is rare Grandmage. How awful that none of your snowdrops have flowered this year. Have a look at the Alpine Garden Society website too, it is another full of interest. There is a National Collection Holder for Galanthus but I cr the url for the website. I'd get in touch with Tweedbank bulbs and see if they can offer any advice. Sometimes bulbs apparently disappear only to pop up the following year or even later and that could be down to the plant deciding to expand and put its efforts into growing the small bulblets in to a flowering size bulb. If there is foliage there will be bulbs below just not flowering sized ones. I was looking at the snowdrops grown by members of goy and Karensusan in Carnoustie and Tetarch in Bristol both say they cannot grow them successfully. No apparent reason for it.

Strange isnt it? I did e.mail Tweedbank and all they said was once the bulbs/plants leave them, thats it!!!! So I wont buy from them again. I will do some research thank you, I adore them so and wanted some in my garden too but I will have to wait and see if they come up next year, that will be two years of waiting. Lol.

I am surprised thaty Karen says she can't grow them. The £725 one was grown only a few miles from where she lives!!!!

Another mystery Bb. Tetarch and Bjs live reasonably closely and she reckons she cannot grow them successfully either. Both ladies do agree that they are 'diggers' so may be moving the bulbs around, but in my garden if they end up in the compost heap by mistake or because the offset bulbs are too small for me to see, they do then appear elsewhere when I spread the mulch. Karen does have some visible in her photos so perhaps it is a case of throwing them away in the weeding process.
Grandmage before you came back on with their answer i too looked at their site. While I can understand their policy which is designed to protect them, the bad publicity in not even offering a reason for the lack of flowers seems to be so offhand that I would not consider using them either. A bit of PR advice would not go amiss methinks. You were not accusing them of sending bulbs which were inferior so I can't understand their attitude.

Maybe they dont need to worry about the 'few' customers that complain Scot. as they sell enough maybe, so they have no need to worry.Their reply to my e.mail was short and to the point so thats it!! I am however going to keep an eye on the ones that I have somewhere in my garden and hope that one day they will reward me!

Fingers crossed Grandmage. When you think of all the snowdrops that grow in the compost heaps in cemetaries up and down the country it seems unbelievable that a supplier can't even advise you on steps to take to help you have flowers next year. Have you any foliage at all?

Yes I have foliage as far as I can see (forgotten where I planted some) in fact I have marked these with a stick so I dont disturb them in the summer. I will be patient til next year, I suppose you can't rush gardening can you? Thanks Scot.

Pretty bad customer service there Grandmage. How silly, if they had taken the 5 - 10 minutes to provide you with some reasonable advice you'd have been singing there praises and drumming up more business. Instead I'm now inclined to avoid them.

I'm glad you said you have more snowdrops showing this year scotsgran. I wont give up on mine yet then, see if they show themselves next year. Shame, I didn't even get one (well not that I have noticed) this year.

If Bb or Mg are around maybe they can advise you whether to feed your snowdrop leaves with tomato food as has been advised for other spring flowering bulbs. I find the garden is very variable from year to year and last year it took a battering from factors outwith my control. Good luck for some flowers next year.

We feed all our bulbs grown in containers with tomato feed but rarely feed any in the open garden. The garden soil has been well mulched for years and has a good level of humus. If the soil was on the thin side then a feed would not come amis though I would be using bonemeal (on a day when it is not blowing a gale - unlike today) rather than a liquid feed.