Right now I have patches of snowdrops coming into bloom.\u00a0 The earliest appeared on Christmas day, followed by a long fallow period while winter did its worst.\u00a0 Now, the daylight hours last longer and the snowdrops are brave enough to emerge.\u00a0 I have a score of different varieties, but my favorite\u2014the one I have been waiting for since this time last year\u2014is \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019.<\/p>\n
Of course the \u2018Lady\u2019 has a more formal Latin name: Galanthus nivalis f. pleniflorus. \u00a0Like all snowdrops, \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019 is a small, ground-hugging plant with dangling flowers, each of which bears three elongated outer petals and several shorter inner petals. \u00a0\u2018The inner petals are doubled, giving the blooms added heft and a special allure.\u00a0 What makes \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019 even more interesting is that the markings on those doubled petals are yellow instead of the usual green.\u00a0 The average person probably doesn\u2019t notice snowdrop markings, but I can tell you that if you lie down on your stomach and get nose to nose with a blooming snowdrop, you will see all kinds of things.<\/p>\n
Galanthus nivalis, the common snowdrop\u2019s species name, comes from two Latin words. \u201cGalanthus\u201d means white and \u201cnivalis\u201d means snowy or growing in the snow. \u00a0The creators of Nivea\u00ae lotion were probably thinking of that when they perfected a snowy white beauty potion designed to give users perfect skin.<\/p>\n
When I was still a galanthus novice, I saw a picture of \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019 in a book and fell in love with the flower\u2019s lush form and beautiful yellow markings. . \u00a0I tried to find an American source for either bulbs or plants, but never succeeded. \u00a0I consoled myself by dividing my clumps of ordinary snowdrops, but, like any true garden fanatic, I still pined for the unattainable double yellow snowdrop.\u2019<\/p>\n
Then, finally, I found a source.\u00a0 A garden magazine article mentioned a small nursery that specialized in snowdrops.\u00a0 I contacted Temple Nursery in Trumansburg, New York, and the proprietor, Hitch Lyman, sent me his catalogue. \u00a0\u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019 was in residence and graced the first page.\u00a0 The price was high, the annual window of plant availability was narrow and the limit was one plant, but I ordered immediately. \u00a0\u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019 arrived several months later \u201cin the green\u201d, having been dug from an established clump just after the flowers faded.\u00a0 I raced out to the garden and installed the plant immediately.\u00a0 The only wrinkle was that I had to wait until the following spring to see the \u2018Lady\u2019 strut her stuff in my garden.<\/p>\n
The wait was worth it.\u00a0 The next March, \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019 emerged from her winter slumber, looking as lovely as her PR photo.\u00a0 She has prospered ever since.<\/p>\n
But I am never content to simply grow a plant; I need to know its story. \u00a0I did research\u2013lots of it\u2013and found that \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019s tale is as elusive as the plant itself.\u00a0 The Elphinstones are an aristocratic Scottish clan, dating back to 1510. \u00a0The landscape of English and Scottish history is littered with them, and England\u2019s National Portrait Gallery has renderings of at least twelve different distinguished Elphinstones.\u00a0 In the twentieth century, Lady Mary Bowes Lyon, aunt of England\u2019s Queen Elizabeth, married an Elphinstone, giving the family a connection to the English royals.\u00a0 Lady Mary was interested in botany, publishing a book called Flowers and Their Families<\/em> in 1946.\u00a0 \u00a0Though she apparently had nothing to do with snowdrops, she had her own floral namesake\u2013a Scottish-bred, apricot-flowered hybrid tea rose, \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019, introduced in 1921.<\/p>\n After sifting through a large amount of Elphinstone lore, I finally found a notation about Sir Graeme Elphinstone, who reportedly discovered the showy little snowdrop in 1890 while walking on the grounds of his Cheshire estate, Heawood Hall.\u00a0 Sir Graeme named the unusual plant in honor of his wife or daughter.\u00a0 The snowdrop was so interesting and different that he gave it to a noted Scottish plantsman and snowdrop enthusiast, Samuel Arnott. \u00a0\u00a0Arnott (1852-1930) was fabled for passing choice varieties on to influential gardening friends, and that is probably how \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019 found its way into circulation.<\/p>\n Even in the British Isles, availability is limited. \u00a0When I originally visited the Royal Horticulture Society\u2019s website, I found less than a dozen nurseries listed as suppliers of the double yellow variety, and not all of them actually carried it among their current offerings. Now eight suppliers are listed.<\/p>\n I suspect that \u00a0I know why.\u00a0 In my garden, at least, \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019 prospers, but is slow to increase.\u00a0 According to some sources, the yellow markings also occasionally revert to green, making the plant indistinguishable from the more common green-marked, double-flowered \u2018Flore Pleno\u2019.<\/p>\n So why go to all the trouble and expense of acquiring this semi-obscure snowdrop?\u00a0 Because I am a plant collector at heart and I an especially fond of yellow flowers. \u00a0Why spend hours slaving over a hot computer and trolling through reference volumes to discover the plant\u2019s origins?\u00a0 As a historian I love to dig into the past.\u00a0 As a suburbanite I need to know all the gossip about the individuals I invite into my garden.\u00a0 After all, the presence of a genuine Scottish aristocrat might do wonders for local property values.<\/p>\n Hitch Lyman, of the Temple Nursery, digs and ships his snowdrops during the first week of April each year. \u00a0To obtain a copy of The Temple Nursery\u2019s catalog, send $3.00 to the Temple Nursery, Box 591, Trumansburg, New York 14886.\u00a0 In prior years, Carolyn\u2019s Shade Garden, an online\/mail order vendor in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania has also carried \u2018Lady Elphinstone\u2019.\u00a0 Her website is https:\/\/carolynsshadegardens.com\/<\/a>.\u00a0 Though her inventory is somewhat smaller than Hitch Lyman\u2019s, she also carries many beautiful varieties.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Right now I have patches of snowdrops coming into bloom.\u00a0 The earliest appeared on Christmas day, followed by a long fallow period while winter did its worst.\u00a0 Now, the daylight hours last longer and the snowdrops are brave enough to emerge.\u00a0 I have a score of different varieties, but my favorite\u2014the one I have been … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,5],"tags":[371,238,2054,2055,272,2056],"class_list":["post-2662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-winter","tag-galanthus","tag-garden-history","tag-lady-elphinstone-snowdrop","tag-snodrops","tag-spring-flowering-bulbs","tag-yellow-snowdrops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2663,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions\/2663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}