It's Snowdrop Time!

Around this time in March last year I remarked on the magnificence of the snowdrop displays in the woodlands to the northeast of Dunrobin Castle and I have to make the same comment after our walk today. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised and this is simply 'normal' for this area.

In some ways it's a bit disappointing that the flower that seems most emblematic of the earliest signs of a British spring should be a foreigner, an immigrant, something that was brought in from a wide area of Spain, France and the Low Countries where the species Galanthus nivalis is native.

It's one of twenty natural species of Galanthus, the others being mainly found around the Black and Aegean Seas and east to the Caspian - see Wikipedia map here.

Snowdrops are lovely because they come in such numbers that they carpet the floors of our woodlands - which rather neglects the point that each and every one of them is remarkably pretty - one just has to get down on one's hands and knees and look up at them - which may attract some strange looks.