Snowdrop

The common snowdrop is a small perennial of the family Amaryllidaceae, the best known and most widespread of the twenty species in its genus, standing seven to fifteen centimetres tall. Each bulb sends up two narrow grey-green leaves and a single stalk bearing one nodding, bell-shaped white flower, whose three inner segments are touched with green at the tips; it blooms from January to April and often comes up through snow. It is native across Europe from Spain to Ukraine and is widely naturalised in woodland elsewhere; in Britain, long taken for a native, it was probably brought in around the early sixteenth century. The name Galanthus means milk flower, and the English name snowdrop first appears in the 1633 edition of Gerard's herbal. Grieve found it of little account in medicine, though a glossary of 1465 counted it an emmenagogue; galantamine, first extracted from snowdrops, is now used to help with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Kynes gathers its lore: Persephone carried it back from the underworld, it was unlucky to bring indoors and an omen of death when given to the sick in England, yet in the Welsh Borders a bowl of the flowers taken in at Imbolc drove out evil spirits, and in England and Scotland it was a flower of hope for heralding spring. Kynes gives it to earth, for courage and release.