Leucojum ‘Null Punkte’ | CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS

Archive for Leucojum ‘Null Punkte’

Snowdrops: Live Radio Interview

This beautiful yellow snowdrop, ‘Spindlestone Surpise’, will be available in the 2025 Snowdrop Catalogue—no advance orders please.

For our current Snowdrop Catalogue, click here. If you want to be notified about the next snowdrop catalogue, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com, and specify snowdrops.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US. For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

The final snowdrop shipment of the 2024 season was sent out on Saturday. Now we turn to preparing all the wonderful snowdrop cultivars that will appear in the 2025 catalogue, including ‘Spindlestone Surprise’ above.

The very rare snowflake, Leucojum ‘Null Punkte’ will also be offered next year.

I have found that for the health of the plants, all dividing and transplanting must occur before April 1. Plants dug up after that date do not fare well. The weather in the midAtlantic is perfect right now with very cool nights and highs in the mid-40s.

I finally have enough of the double winter aconite, Eranthis ‘Richard Bish’, which I grew from seed, to include it in 2025.

On February 21, I did a live radio interview on snowdrops for a regional radio show called “Into the Garden”. You can listen to the interview here, which provides useful information on snowdrops and even covers hellebores and Carolyn’s Shade Gardens.

The lovely fall-blooming snowdrop, ‘Peter Gatehouse’, will also be available next year.

Thanks to all of you who ordered snowdrops this year, we had the most successful snowdrop sales in the history of our business. As always, your support of our small, family-owned and -operated business is very much appreciated.

Blogs are a lot more fun for everyone, especially the writer, when readers leave comments. Scroll down to the end of the page to the box where it says “Leave a Comment” and start typing—-it’s easy!

Carolyn

Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Snowflakes (Leucojum) Continue the Snowdrop Season

Posted in bulbs for shade, my garden, snowdrops, winter, winter interest with tags Carolyn's Shade Gardens, galanthus, Leucojum 'Gertrude Wister', Leucojum 'Null Punkte', Leucojum aestivum, Leucojum vernum, Leucojum vernum var. carpaticum, Leucojum vernum var. wagneri, snowdrops, snowdrops for sale U.S., snowdrops in the green, spring snowflake, summer snowflake on March 17, 2016 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Summer snowflake with Celandine poppy in the woodland at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens.

Our current snowdrop catalogue is on line here.

When snowdrops are finishing, their close relatives, snowflakes (Leucojum), are ready to take over the display. They are quite beautiful, but haven’t been subjected to the intense selection process that has resulted in over 1,500 snowdrop cultivars. They are very easy to grow, and I think they deserve more attention.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Leucojum aestivum in my woodland in April.

There are two main species of snowflakes: Leucojum aestivum or summer snowflake and Leucojum vernum or spring snowflake. Summer snowflake blooms in April in our area so the common name is very confusing. It is a large and vigorous plant reaching 12 to 18 inches with multiple green-tipped, white, lantern-shaped flowers at the end of each flower stem.

It likes moist soil but grows quite well in my dry woodland as you can see from the photos. It grows in dappled woodland conditions but also quite sunny spots and seeds aggressively in my garden. Summer snowflake is native to Central and Eastern Europe. The cultivar ‘Gravetye Giant’ has bigger flowers, but I have not grown it.

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Spring snowflake

Spring snowflake, Leucojum vernum, blooms in March in our area so it could easily be called winter snowflake. On its own, it is a diminutive plant reaching 6 to 9 inches with single, green-tipped, white, lantern-shaped flowers at the end of each flower stem. The leaves are strap-shaped and a very pretty glossy, bright green. It likes moist soil but grows quite well in average moisture conditions in deciduous shade to part shade locations. Spring snowflake is native to Central and Southern Europe.

Leucojum vernum Ithan Park 3-17-2016 5-21-07 PM

A very upright and dark green Leucojum vernum—it stood out from the hundreds around it.

Although unassuming as a single plant, spring snowflake is breath-taking when massed as the following photos show:

Leucojum vernum at Winterthur 2016 3-12-2016 2-52-03 PM 3-12-2016 2-52-03 PM

A clump of spring snowflake.

Leucojum vernum at Winterthur 2016 3-12-2016 2-52-03 PM 3-12-2016 3-49-41 PM

A hillside of spring snowflake in mid-March at Winterthur.

Spring snowflake combined with Amur adonis and glory-of-the-snow in mid-March at Winterthur.

There are some named forms of Leucojum vernum, which are quite interesting:

Leucojum vernum Ithan Park 3-17-2016 5-20-19 PM

Leucojum vernum var. wagneri (or vagneri) produces two flowers on each stem, although none of mine did that this year. I have read that it is no longer a valid variety. If you visit naturalized populations of Leucojum vernum, a certain percentage will have twin flowers. This photo shows a wagneri with standard-shaped flowers and green spots.

This wagneri has the yellower spots typical of var. carpathicum pictured below.

Leucojum vernum var. carpathicum

Leucojum vernum var. carpathicum has yellow spots on each petal instead of the normal green spots.

Leucojum vernum 'Null Punkte'

‘Null Punkte’ from Germany is pure white with no spots.

‘Gertrude Wister’ is a semi-double spring snowflake with 12 or more petals instead of the normal 6. It was discovered by noted bulb expert Gertrude Wister in her garden on the Swarthmore College campus in Pennsylvania, US.