Now that I am officially on spring watch, I am having the usual seasonal regrets about early-blooming plants that I did not order or install last fall. Sometimes, however, life gives you second chances, and ten days ago a second chance presented itself. I was pouring over the slim annual catalog from the Temple Nursery, a small snowdrop retailer in Trumansburg, New York, hard by Cornell University. As I got to the last page, my head was filled with visions of snowdrops – sheets of them, in fact –carpeting my lawn and garden. This was tempered by the knowledge that most of Temple’s snowdrops are available as single specimens, or, at best, in groups of three, and it would take several lifetimes for them to form sheets. Great English gardens are built on such multi-generational efforts; American gardens—not so much.
On the last page of the Temple catalog, I found an uncharacteristic entry. The plant described was not a snowdrop at all, but a winter aconite or Eranthis hyemalis. The eranthis was not just any old eranthis, but ‘Orange Glow’, with flowers that vary from the usual yellow, buttercup-like blooms by presenting themselves to the world in a shade of “warm apricot.” I was smitten.
Eranthis is one of those plants that I always think about ordering, but never get around to. Generally I think about it in late winter or early spring when I see the little yellow blooms in someone else’s garden. I never know the gardener well enough to beg for a small division and by the time fall rolls around, I am usually so bewitched by the staggering array of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other larger seasonal delectables that I forget all about little eranthis.
There are very few common garden flowers that bloom at the end of winter. Christmas rose or Helleborus niger does. The occasional early snowdrop will rear its dainty head, but aconite blooms in advance of most of the snowdrop tribe. Eranthis’ bright yellow buttercups are also very easy to spot. Hitch Lyman, proprietor of Temple Nursery, describes the normal color as “acid yellow,” but I think of it as a bright and buttery shade.
Eranthis is also distinctive because each flower is framed by a ruff of deeply divided leaves. Prior to coming across ‘Orange Glow’ in the Temple catalog, I had only seen yellow eranthis, specifically the hyemalis species. Some catalogs offer another yellow-flowered eranthis, Eranthis cilicica. It seems to vary from hyemalis chiefly because the new foliage is a bronzy color when it emerges in spring, rather than green.
Both species grow three to six inches tall and wide and form clumps if they are happy.
Happiness for an eranthis includes full sun to part shade and consistently moist soil. Like other spring ephemerals, including crocuses and snowdrops, the plants go dormant by spring’s end. It is wise to mark their location so that you don’t accidentally dig them up later in the season.
Given their appearance, it is not surprising that eranthis are part of the Ranunculaceae or buttercup family. Like other buttercup family members, including hellebores, they are good plant partners. Brent and Becky Heath, of Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, suggest a couple of good companions for eranthis. Yellow and blue are a natural pair, and the Heaths suggest ‘April View’ crocus—Crocus kosaninii—as a good match. Despite the name, the crocus is supposed to bloom in late winter or earliest spring. They also suggest the fragrant woronowii snowdrop—Galanthus woronowii. Apparently this is such an early bird that it blooms in very late fall, through the winter and into spring in Virginia. For those of us who live in more northerly regions, it will probably emerge and bloom at about the same time as eranthis. Like all snowdrops, its charms are best viewed at extremely close range—for example, lying on your stomach in the snow about six inches from the plant. The good thing about pairing the snowdrop with the eranthis is that the yellow of the eranthis will draw your eye to the entire display.
I am about to order ‘Orange Glow’ in an effort to rectify past omissions in the early spring bulb category. I’ll make a note to myself, yet again, to order a lot of the cheaper hyemalis-type eranthis in the fall. A year from now when my eye catches something bright yellow lurking just under a shrub, it will be a cheerful eranthis rather than a discarded plastic shopping bag.