Snowdrops, the blooms that signal the end of winter is coming, have arrived around a week early this year, the Royal Horticultural Society said.
A mild winter meant snowdrop varieties usually seen at the turn of the year were flowering in the first part of December, while ordinary snowdrops are a week earlier – and much earlier than in the cold winters of 2009 and 2010.
Snowdrops have also seen their flowering time shift in recent decades as a result of climate change, with the “fair maids of February” – once common in late February – now routinely flowering in the first part of January.
Snowdrops in bloom at Rococo Garden in Painswick, Gloucestershire (Ben Birchall/PA)
This year’s cold snap has arrested their development at the flowering stage, giving gardeners more time to enjoy the blooms, RHS chief horticultural adviser Guy Barter said.
“Some of the varieties which we normally expect round the turn of the year, they were in flower in the first part of December.
“The ordinary snowdrops are a bit earlier, and they are a lot earlier than in 2009 and 2010,” he said.
“There is excellent evidence that snowdrops in the 1950s and 1960s would flower in February, they would not be in midwinter.
“Now routinely at Wisley, they’re flowering in the first part of January.”
Snowdrops in flower at RHS Wisley, Surrey (Joanna Kossak/RHS/PA)
Snowdrops are one of the most popular garden bulbs, possibly because “they are a traditional symbol of the end of winter coming up, and spring approaching, and they’re very graceful”, he said.
Snowdrops fans – known as “galanthophiles” from the Latin name for the plant, Galanthus – pay a lot of money for interesting varieties.
The RHS is celebrating the snowdrop at its London Early Spring Plant Fair this week, at RHS Lindley Hall, Westminster, with an installation of different varieties in clear baubles cascading down from the ceiling as a key exhibit.
Despite their popularity in the UK, they are not native to this country, Mr Barter said.
Wild snowdrops hail from across Europe, from the Pyrenees and northern Spain eastwards to Ukraine, and from Germany and Poland down to southern Italy, Albania and northern Greece.
“No one is quite sure when they were introduced to the UK, possibly by the Romans, but they were around when the monks cultivated gardens in the late middle ages,” Mr Barter said.
Their popularity put them at risk in their native range, leading to all species of snowdrop being listed in 1990 on the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) to control the harvesting and trade in wild plants.
While international trade is considered to have ceased, in some areas in eastern Europe populations are still at risk from habitat loss.