Frances has shared a photograph of a beautiful Hyacinth she has grown. Mine are outside and pretty cold at the time of writing. They are bulbs from previous years when I grew them indoors in glass vases. Nature is so brilliant; they have flowered outside ever since. Sue J.
I haven’t got much yet in the way of flowers in my garden, though daffodils have very full buds. I have a few crocuses and snowdrops but the best harbingers of spring have been my hellebores. What a shame they hang their heads so you need to lift the flowers to really see them. In the Hengistbury Head garden we have lots of hellebores , especially the Helleborus foetidus, or stinking hellebore. It has lots of popular names - dungwort, setterwort and bear’s foot. Apparently it smells bad when the leaves are crushed. The outer “petals” on the hellebores are in fact sepals (in most flowers these are green and enclose the coloured petals). The petals grow inside this outer ring but in hellebores they are actually tubular and contain nectar, so they are called nectaries. The nectar is basically a sugary liquid but in some hellebores it also contains yeasts. Experiments have shown that the activity of the yeast raises the temperature within the flowers making them more attractive to any pollinators that are around in the winter season. The fact that they provide for pollinators makes them very important to wildlife at this fairly barren time of year. Margaret
Pictures below; Hyacinth, Stinking Hellebore, Red Hellebore and White Hellebore