Galanthus nivalis

The skies all around are grey and dismal, and the ground is heavy and sodden.  But I look down and see that the promise of a new year is unfolding. The snowdrops, with their long narrow leaves and delicate white lantern flowers are springing up, looking so fragile and yet braving the frosts and lashing rain and coping far better than me.

Just when Christmas is a fading memory and spring seems so far away these unassuming  little flowers break through - although it seems that they are arriving earlier each year. Traditionally the end of Christmas was celebrated 40 days afterwards, on Candlemas Day (2nd February  to save you working it out) when snowdrops replaced the image of the Virgin on the altar, and in some places a bowl of snowdrops would be brought into the house (a tradition I think we should revive).

There is a new tradition taking hold now of ‘Snowdrop Days’ when gardens open up for selected weekends to show off their collections of snowdrops, which is fast becoming so popular that the quiet beauty of the flower disappears under a mass of churned mud and hot-dog stalls.

It is commonly thought that snowdrops were introduced into this country by monks, as a symbol of purity and chastity, for they are found in great swathes alongside derelict monasteries such as Walsingham and Anglesey Abbey. But they were not recorded in any of the early manuscripts, suggesting that their provenance is later. The first drawing of them is in Gerard’s Herball of 1597 when they are called a ‘bulbous violet’; only later named as a ‘snow drop’ in a subsequent edition of 1633. But clearly they found their perfect habitat in the undisturbed ground and meadows around the ruins, even if they were planted after the destruction caused by the dissolution of the monasteries in the mid sixteenth century.

The generic name Galanthus, is from the Greek gala (milk) and anthos (flower), named by Carl Linnaeus in 1735, and nivalis means snowy. There are many different species and cultivars, each minutely different.

This has led the geeks among us (‘Galanthophiles’) to search out ever rarer and sought-after varieties (like a bizarre revival of ‘tulipomania’ from the early seventeenth century) with one Galanthus plicatus ‘Golden Fleece’ changing hands a few years ago for £1,390 (plus £4 postage). Robin Lane Fox has suggested with his inimitable wit that these ‘Snowdroppers’ are ‘ persons of mature experience and a battle-scarred financial history which stretches back to the 1970s’.

Far better I think to plant a few Galanthus nivalis in your garden and experience the private pleasure of these modest flowers and their promise of a bright new year ahead.