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.\u00a0 Sometimes, however, life gives you second chances, and ten days ago a second chance presented itself.\u00a0 I was pouring over the slim annual catalog from the Temple Nursery, a small snowdrop retailer in Trumansburg, New York, hard by Cornell University.\u00a0 As I got to the last page, my head was filled with visions of snowdrops \u2013 sheets of them, in fact \u2013carpeting my lawn and garden.\u00a0 This was tempered by the knowledge that most of Temple\u2019s snowdrops are available as single specimens, or, at best, in groups of three, and it would take several lifetimes for them to form sheets.\u00a0 Great English gardens are built on such multi-generational efforts; American gardens\u2014not so much.<\/p>\n
On the last page of the Temple catalog, I found an uncharacteristic entry.\u00a0 The plant described was not a snowdrop at all, but a winter aconite or Eranthis hyemalis.\u00a0 The eranthis was not just any old eranthis, but \u2018Orange Glow\u2019, with flowers that vary from the usual yellow, buttercup-like blooms by presenting themselves to the world in a shade of \u201cwarm apricot.\u201d\u00a0 I was smitten.<\/p>\n
Eranthis is one of those plants that I always think about ordering, but never get around to.\u00a0 Generally I think about it in late winter or early spring when I see the little yellow blooms in someone else\u2019s garden.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
There are very few common garden flowers that bloom at the end of winter.\u00a0 Christmas rose or Helleborus niger does.\u00a0 The occasional early snowdrop will rear its dainty head, but aconite blooms in advance of most of the snowdrop tribe.\u00a0 Eranthis\u2019 bright yellow buttercups are also very easy to spot.\u00a0 Hitch Lyman, proprietor of Temple Nursery, describes the normal color as \u201cacid yellow,\u201d but I think of it as a bright and buttery shade.<\/p>\n
Eranthis is also distinctive because each flower is framed by a ruff of deeply divided leaves.\u00a0 Prior to coming across \u2018Orange Glow\u2019 in the Temple catalog, I had only seen yellow eranthis, specifically the hyemalis species.\u00a0 Some catalogs offer another yellow-flowered eranthis, Eranthis cilicica.\u00a0 It seems to vary from hyemalis chiefly because the new foliage is a bronzy color when it emerges in spring, rather than green.<\/p>\n
Both species grow three to six inches tall and wide and form clumps if they are happy.<\/p>\n
Happiness for an eranthis includes full sun to part shade and consistently moist soil.\u00a0 Like other spring ephemerals, including crocuses and snowdrops, the plants go dormant by spring\u2019s end.\u00a0 It is wise to mark their location so that you don\u2019t accidentally dig them up later in the season.<\/p>\n
Given their appearance, it is not surprising that eranthis are part of the Ranunculaceae or buttercup family.\u00a0 Like other buttercup family members, including hellebores, they are good plant partners.\u00a0 Brent and Becky Heath, of Brent and Becky\u2019s Bulbs, suggest a couple of good companions for eranthis.\u00a0 Yellow and blue are a natural pair, and the Heaths suggest \u2018April View\u2019 crocus\u2014Crocus kosaninii\u2014as a good match.\u00a0 Despite the name, the crocus is supposed to bloom in late winter or earliest spring.\u00a0 They also suggest the fragrant woronowii snowdrop\u2014Galanthus woronowii.\u00a0 Apparently this is such an early bird that it blooms in very late fall, through the winter and into spring in Virginia. \u00a0For those of us who live in more northerly regions, it will probably emerge and bloom at about the same time as eranthis.\u00a0 Like all snowdrops, its charms are best viewed at extremely close range\u2014for example, lying on your stomach in the snow about six inches from the plant.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
I am about to order \u2018Orange Glow\u2019 in an effort to rectify past omissions in the early spring bulb category.\u00a0 I\u2019ll make a note to myself, yet again, to order a lot of the cheaper hyemalis-type eranthis in the fall.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.\u00a0 Sometimes, however, life gives you second chances, and ten days ago a second chance presented itself.\u00a0 I was pouring over the slim annual catalog from the Temple Nursery, … 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":[755,752,372,753,757,754,756,370,751],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-winter","tag-orange-glow-eranthis","tag-buttercup-family","tag-crocus","tag-early-spring-plants","tag-eranthis","tag-late-winter-plants","tag-low-growing-plants","tag-snowdrops","tag-winter-aconite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","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=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1000,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions\/1000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}