From “The Onset of Spring” in A Garden of One’s Own by Elizabeth Lawrence:
“No matter how closely you watch for the snowdrops, you never quite catch them on the way. One day the ground is bare, and the next time you look, the nodding buds are ready to open!“
From “February (Winter Blooms)” in Through the Garden Gate by Elizabeth Lawrence:
“English snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), called Candlemas bells, or Mary’s tapers, are the emblem of hope. They are not often seen hereabouts, as their place is taken by the snowflake, which grows so much better with us, but I have had them in my garden by the second of February or before….
“One of the stories of the garden of Eden is that it was snowing when Adam and Eve were driven out, and the Angel, touching the flakes, turned them to flowers as a sign that spring would come.“
Below are five views of a snowdrop I found growing in the filtered light provided by a large maple tree, at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. I couldn’t decide if I liked the partially darkened background (in the last three shots) better than the others … so I included all five photos.
I took the photos below in the same area, thinking they, too, were a kind of snowdrop … yet imagine my surprise to discover that they aren’t.
I’ve mentioned before here that I often use a site called Plantnet Identify to help me figure out the names of various plants and flowers that I photograph. I typically use the site as a research-starter, since it takes a picture you upload and returns the names and images of possible matches, which I then chase down some googly rabbit-holes to see if I can confirm the plant’s identity. I uploaded one of the three pictures below, and here’s what Plantnet said:
Loddon-lily? Spring snowflake? — what? not a snowdrop?
Turns out many people (!!) get confused by these two plants, enough that there are articles describing how they’re different. See, for example: What is the difference between snowdrops and snowflakes? Or just remember this: snowdrop flowers have petals that look like helicopter blades with only one flower on a stem; snowflakes look like tiny bells and will often produce multiple flowers, clustered near each other, at the tip of each stem.
If you would like to learn more about the differences between these two plants, see Galanthus (the snowdrop’s plant family) and Leucojum (the snowflake’s plant family). The history and cultural references for the snowdrop, in particular, are interesting to read.
Here are the first three snowflake photos:
Here are three more snowflakes, produced with a little more grain in the images because they were nestled in a very shady spot so I used I higher ISO — which rendered the images a lot softer in focus, but not entirely unpleasant to look at. 🙂
Here are five views of one of the early daffodils I found, one of the few hardy enough to produce two large flowers during these late-winter, early-spring days. The five views were taken at decreasing focal lengths; and for the last two, I used a shallower depth of field to blur the backgrounds more but retain some of the surrounding purple, gold, and blue colors highlighted by a bit of reflected sunlight. The background colors in all five photos come from pine bark and leaves that fell around the hibernating daffodils during late fall and early winter.
Sometimes nature just likes to surprise me with its deceptively simple yet elegant forms. Here’s a batch of tulip leaves, just a few inches high, soaking in some mid-day sunlight, probably waiting a few more days to send up some blooms.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!