By Andy Winfield
The other day, I was walking through the Garden as a very heavy shower of rain had just finished. The landscape around me seemed to be looking up disgruntled, rainwater dripping down waterproofs, running down the path, off branches and twigs. Then the sun came out. The dark clouds carrying the rain were moving away behind me and the low January sun shone in my face. I stopped; between me and the sun were three low trees, and as the sun’s light travelled through them to me, the recent water glowed. It looked like the tree was made of water, so recently had the shower passed; I’d never really seen anything like it, and it reminded me to keep looking, even in darkest January, keep looking, otherwise we don’t see. This is the same with January and early February flower, they’re there, but we have to look.
Eranthis hyemalis is also known as the Winter Aconite. We have it here in the Botanic Garden and every year I think we’ve lost it, so I have to actively look for it. Its flowers are thumbnail sized, and when you see them they’re suddenly obvious; like small buttery orbs sitting on the soil before they open out like Elizabethan nobility, green ruffs around their necks. In their native areas of French and Italian woodlands they grow on mass and are hard to miss; they’ve naturalised here and can be seen in clusters in UK woodlands such as those in the Wye Valley but hide here in the Garden until I notice them around early February.
Amongst the grassy areas under our old oak trees are clusters of early flowers. Primroses, Primula vulgaris, with their very own version of yellow, begin popping up around now. Their name literally translates as ‘first flower’ from old French ‘primerose’, and they’re always in the leading pack of early flowering plants. They are a very beautiful flower and suit every kind of light, from the days when it feels there’s a lid on the city and it never seems to get light, to those low sunshine winter days that almost seem primrose coloured themselves.
Cyclamen coum’s flowers are peeping up above the grass stems, dots of purple making themselves known; these plants grow around the Black Sea, from Bulgaria, through Turkey, to Georgia in rocky pockets and elevated woodland. They’ll take whatever winter will throw at them and keep flowering until the end of February.
Crocus tommasinianus is another plant that flowers in February; it sits alongside and through the primrose and cyclamen in the Botanic Garden, is also native to Bulgaria, but it’s range heads the other way, West, extending early year purple across the map. The petals are light sensitive and only open when the levels are good. When the sun does come out, they open fully, their colour vivid, attracting the attention of bees and causing passers-by to smile to themselves and think that February’s not so bad.
These plants are beginning to show themselves right now, while the mornings are still like the middle of the night, storms more than capable of sweeping in with icy snow and hail; but as January ends and February begins, little pockets of colour appear on the ground, and the sun has little bits of warmth in the middle of the day, we just have to look for it.