Description
This has lovely, bluish leaves (with supervolute vernation) which are initially quite narrow and shorter than the stem at flowering, the leaves elongate after flowering and also become a little wider, eventually reflexing with maturity. The stem is 10-15cm tall only and holds one white flower which has a V- or U-shaped green mark at the tip of the inners. This can be shaped as in some of our photographs or, in other plants, it can extended up the centre of the inner petals or even up and across the inners, giving an almost totally green inner tube. It is, naturally, variable, a fact noted over its natural range also.
A charming, diminutive sub-alpine snowdrop from the Caucasus and Trans-Caucasus as well as the Pontus mountains of Turkey and adjacent Russia. It is said, perhaps, to even reach Iran. It does, apparently, vary in character across its wild range and as such much of its recorded wild distribution depends on your interpretation of when one of the wild populations is in fact another, very similar, species. It is said to be nowhere common, but it is certainly widespread and scattered. In the wild it is reputed to grow on limey soils, such conditions are not needed in cultivation, it just needs fertility and light shade.
It is very little seen but this rarity probably related to a limited introduction and a slow rate of vegetative increase, rather than to any difficulty of cultivation. It does however seem to both relish cold and to disdain excessive heat. With us it grows best in a shaded, cold spot in a humus-rich soil, over limestone, set apart from our other species, but our original source grows it in an acidic, peaty soil.
This originally came to us from cultivated stock originally from Leonid Bondarenko in Lithuania, this has been grown and propagated here ever since.
for UK sales ONLY NOT available for export
