Spring Snowflake, St. Agnes' Flower

I received this as a bonus bulb from Easy to Grow Bulbs. I planted them in a part of the garden that is "under contstruction" because fo...Read Morer some reason I wasn't sure if I would like them. If I had only known how beautiful and dainty and unique they are, they would have been given a prime spot. This is the 1st year I have grown them here so I will need to wait a year before I can really say they grow great in our area but at least this 1st year, they are doing really well ad cute! cute! cute!

When I first moved into my house in Houston, Texas, a friend of my father's who lived in Galveston gave me some of his snowflake bulbs. T...Read Morehey have been blooming in my back yard beds every February since then for 36 years. They have had no diseases, and no pests have bothered them. They have been moved and propagated several times. I happily look forward to seeing them every year.

A reliable bulb valued for its late winter/early spring flowers---white bells tipped in green hanging gracefully from the tops of the sca...Read Morepes.

The spring snowflake (Leucojum vernum) is commonly and easily confused with the misleadingly named summer snowflake (Leucojum aestivum). The first is rarely found in North American gardens (though it's been commonly grown in British gardens since the late 1600's). The second is a common heritage and pass along plant widely naturalized throughout the Southeast. Neither blooms in summer.

If it has three or more flowers on a stem, it's a summer snowflake (Leucojum aestivum).

Spring snowflakes have one flower per stem (or in some uncommon varieties, two), and their foliage generally gets no more than 6-8" tall. Summer snowflakes can have 1-7 flowers per stem (usually 3-6 if not overcrowded), and get 12-24" tall.

The confusion between these two species may not matter much in the deep South, where both may bloom from mid-December into March. But in Zone 6, where winter-blooming plants are few, spring snowflakes begin blooming with or just after the common snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) in March before the daffodils begin, when our eyes are starving to see something blooming in the landscape, and we have few options. Here, summer snowflakes (despite their name) start a month later, in daffodil season, when many more plants have come into bloom.

The foliage of both species dies down untidily, like that of daffodils, in June here in Massachusetts Z5-6.

Both tolerate wet soils and poor drainage better than most spring bulbs, and neither does well with the dry summer baking that most bulbs love. They're good choices for the upper banks of streams and ponds, and also do well under ordinary garden conditions if not too dry in summer. Louise Beebe Wilder writes that spring snowflakes are slower to increase and less inclined to naturalize than summer snowflakes.

Both kinds of snowflake are easily moved "in the green" like snowdrops, as long as they're replanted immediately. Summer snowflakes are easily obtained in the fall from bulb vendors, though they may spend the next season recovering from the ordeal. Spring snowflakes do not tolerate the dry storage that the bulb vendors put them through, and---despite what Armitage writes---bulbs purchased in the fall generally turn out to be dead or prove to be summer snowflakes. The best way to ship them without killing them is to dig them as the foliage dies down in the spring and pack them moist with something like perlite or vermiculite or shredded paper that will stay damp but not wet, and to make sure they're planted immediately on receipt.

according to "The Complete Book of Bulbs" this plant is only hardy to zone 7 , but i found my mystery flowers here in zone 8 in Louisiana...Read More , planted them last year, and here they are blooming prettily by my porch steps!!! i was sure i could remember my mother growing them when i was small but could never find any growing in this area. Needless to say im thrilled to have found this!!!