Their Latin name, galanthus nivalis, was given them by Linnaeus in 1753. Galanthus means milk-white flowers, and nivalis means snowy. Isn't that delightful. It's one of the reasons I love the latin names of plants and flowers.
Poetry and printing, words and ideas, haiku, horses, and the natural world.
Friday, 7 February 2014
Snowdrops. Turnastone. Horticultural Latin.
I love snowdrops the most of any flower. They really don't care what the weather is like, pushing up through snow, ice or waterlogged soil to tell us that the spring is on its way. Much tougher than their delicate appearance would suggest. Here are the snowdrops in Turnastone churchyard.
Snowdrops look particularly lovely amongst gravestones and yew trees.
I ride past this churchyard very frequently, and Thomas and I always stop to look at the lovely little flowers. Here are the Turnastone snowdrops last year, in 2013, bursting through the deep snow. As I said, they really don't care about the weather!
Their Latin name, galanthus nivalis, was given them by Linnaeus in 1753. Galanthus means milk-white flowers, and nivalis means snowy. Isn't that delightful. It's one of the reasons I love the latin names of plants and flowers.
Their Latin name, galanthus nivalis, was given them by Linnaeus in 1753. Galanthus means milk-white flowers, and nivalis means snowy. Isn't that delightful. It's one of the reasons I love the latin names of plants and flowers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think your snowdrops are lovely, the fuchsias, which haven't really stopped flowering as we haven't had any really cold weather, are more pink than white.
ReplyDeleteThe French for snowdrop is 'perce-neige', but we can't seem to grow them here at all, the soil is wrong, I think, you never really see them. I do miss them.
They like dappled shade, and soil that doesn't completely dry out, so a churchyard or hedgerow is the ideal place. They're not native to Britain, although I'm not entirely sure when they arrived here. Probably brought by the Romans, along with everything else!
ReplyDeleteI do love a snowdrop :)
ReplyDeletePS- for some reason Blogger won't let me follow your blog in the normal followy way, but I have it bookmarked to remind me to keep checking back :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Chloe!
ReplyDelete