Arnold Zwicky's Blog

I’ve just posted on star-of-Bethlehem, and  now Ann Burlingham has reminded me of another modest (and hyphenated) spring bulb, glory-of-the-snow. (There are still more, not hyphenated, for example snowdrops, Galanthus, and squills, Scilla.) A photo:

(The most common variant, in blue. The flowers are small, but numerous.)

From Wikipedia:

Chionodoxa, known as glory-of-the-snow, is a small genus of bulbous perennial flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Scilloideae. The genus is endemic to the eastern Mediterranean, specifically Crete, Cyprus and Turkey. The blue, white or pink flowers appear early in the year making them valuable garden ornamentals. The common name of the genus is based on the habit of flowering in high alpine zones when the snow melts in spring.

This entry was posted on April 3, 2014 at 8:02 am and is filed under Language and plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.