It's been slow in the wildflower sighting club lately, so we have been mostly picking up trash on our local walks at the park. The weather this January was well below normal in precip and higher in sunshine, so we have seen lots of moss - seems to be the ideal conditions for it this winter.
In any event, this post is to commemorate the first sighting of a local wildflower this year! Yee-Haw!
It's the winter-blooming Snowdrop (Galanthus). These small white blooms (about 3/4 in. tall) are one of twenty species found in Galanthus. Many cultivars also exist so it's hard to say if these growing along Laurelview road near a ditch are wild or not. These are probably Galanthus nivalis, the most common species in most areas. Galanthus are native to Europe, where they are threatened, due to loss of habitat.
Interesting note from Wikipedia: It was suggested by Andreas Plaitakis and Roger Duvoisin in 1983 that the mysterious magical herb "moly," that appears in Homer's Odyssey, is actually Snowdrop. An active substance in snowdrop is called galantamine, which, as anticholinesterase, could have acted as an antidote to Circe's poisons.
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| Snowdrops at Jenkins Estate (2-21-2014) |
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| Fully opened blossom at Jenkins Estate |
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| On Laurelview Road (2/01/2014) |
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