An Iowa Garden

A new bulb to the garden, is Galanthus ikariae, a snowdrop native to northern Iran, and southern Russia. It is a beautiful little thing, with flower markings like the common, or lesser snowdrop, G. nivalis (a single, small green mark on each inner petal), and very distinctive leaves, which are very wide for a snowdrop, and of a striking, deep, waxy green, distinct for example, from the cool, grey leaves of G. elwesii, the greater snowdrop. Because of questionable hardiness, planting this bulb was certainly viewed as an experiment (but, then, in my hands at least, so is the whole garden). Dicky Graff, in her classic garden book, Flowers in the Winter Garden, says that even in balmy Long Island, G. ikariae was not hardy; it would come up, only to turn to mush with the next cold spell. Well, I've never been one to let expert advice get in the way of my gardening, so I planted a few bulbs last fall (of course the catalogue assured me they were hardy to zone 4). To my delight, the foliage popped up very early, and the first bulb raced into bloom, at which point our temperatures dropped almost 60 degrees in a couple of days, and the whole plant turned to mush (shown above, with several newly emerged, unharmed plants). I guess Dicky knew what she was talking about. It is striking that the newly emerging foliage is absolutely unblemished, but the fully emerged plant was completely destroyed. Another plant is now in bloom, shown below, and we'll see what happens... it is to be almost 60 degrees today, and drop to the mid 20's with snow in two days... if the same thing happens (which is likely), I may move any surviving bulbs to a spot that stays cold very late in the spring, to try and retard their appearance next year. I doubt, though, that I am destined to see drifts of the Persian snowdrop, like I have with G. elwesii, as shown in the last picture, which started with a single bulb, which is seeding downhill.