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21-02-2004, 09:02 PM

In article ,
(paghat) wrote:

And from this day on it's just flowers, flowers, flowers.
In some zones the snowdrops are first, but I've had crocuses for weeks
already, & snowdrops just getting going. I guess the snowdrops remain
"Fair Maids in February" through many zones, but crocuses can leap up way
earlier in some zones, way later in others.

I've got my first TULIP this week. In the past it has always been
kaufmannianas that appear first, but never before March, & they're still
just leaves right now. But to my utter astonishment, appearing way sooner
than expected, a small drift of ultra-short crocus-tulips (Tulipa humilis
var. violacea) had bright pink buds that I noticed about three days ago, &
today I see the petals are just beginning to open. This made me run about
looking everywhere there are tulip-leaves to see if any others are showing
actual buds of color, & one other is, a green-flamed variety called "China
Town," purportedly a May-bloomer, but already has little nubby bright
white-striped pink buds peeping out of the soil; these'll probably be a
long while developing however, whereas the crocus-tulips are on the cusp
of bursting full open.

I didn't want to leave my above error uncorrected re "China Town." The
earliest blooming crocus-tulips ("Violacea") made me go around looking to
see if any other tulip was preparing blooms so early as this, & I spotted
bright pink buds for "China Town" WAY ahead of expected bloom time, but
none others so early. A couple days later, these entirely bright pink buds
have opened into pink-edged leaves, & would no longer fool anyone into
thinking they were flower buds. I just updated my garden diary so that in
the future I'll remember the leaves add spots of color between second &
third week of February, which is pretty cool in itself, but by no means
preparing to bloom already.

A second patch of "Violacea" from another source has skinnier leaves than
the blooming patch, & no buds yet on the skinny-leafed ones, but they are
not in as sunny a spot, so I don't know what percentage of the
"difference" between these two patches is different sources providing
different strains, or just not enough sun. I will lift the shadier drift a
couple months from now when the leaves start dying back & move them to a
sunny space to encourage February blooming for that drift too, plus I'm
going to plant moer crocus-tulip bulbs all over the place next autumn;
I'll look for many varieties as I can find from specialists, hoping many
of them are also this early-flowering. Tulip season getting a head-start
in February just seems too amazing.

The only other leaves as colorful as the "China Town" are for the greigii
tulips, some of which have intensely bright red stripes all over the
leaves, others with fainter red mottling. The brighter stripes tend to
fade a lot before flowers appear, so they are at their height of
leaf-beauty right now. If there was a hosta this colorful they'd be the
most popular hostas in the world; I think the leaf-beauty of greigii
tulips gets underappreciated because of too much focus on blooms.

A couple of our several kaufmanniana tulips also have red-striped leaves
right now, but this invariably means they were hybridized with greigiis, &
that also means they won't naturalize the way purer botanical tulips well,
despite that the hybrid kaufmannias even so get listed in catalogs as
botanicals. They at least perennialize super well, but will never really
spread. We have a small patch of a pure wild kaufmannia, & these get huge
elongated seedpods on them, & naturalize fine.

Trillium leaves are popping up now.

Little flat-blue buds are appearing a half-inch to an inch tall for
Muscari azureum; if you get down real close to the ground these already
look like grape hyacinths for the gardens of dollhouses.

The earliest jack-in-the-pulpit horns have just peaked out of the soil
too. Every day is just so exciting in the garden, to me anyway -- some
visitors don't always get it when I say "Oh! Oh! look at that!" & all they
see is a tiny green pencil-point sticking up half an inch.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/