Galanthus
Lee Poulsen (Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:35:15 PST)

Mark,

I didn't take the comments as ridicule. To me it was more of a "you say
to-may-to; I say to-mah-to" kind of a back-and-forth set of emails. I
would hope no one is sneering at anyone else's favorite bulb. To most
of my close friends, my obsession with my favorite bulbs is something
on the order of a nice, but slightly eccentric, uncle. They ooh and
aah whenever I show them some particularly interesting or amazing
bloom, but I know they don't quite get why I grow so *many*. I'm sure
many of us have similar relations with our friends or family. So it
seems a little like the pot calling the kettle black for one bulbophile
to accuse some other bulbophile of being too obsessed with his or her
favorite species, IMHO.

I don't know if I can even grow snowdrops, so I really don't have a
position on what the attraction is. But I realize that different people
have different tastes. And I'm glad they do, or I might never have been
introduced to some of the species I now count as my favorites but I'm
sure others don't quite get what the attraction is all about. And I've
met John Grimshaw and read many extremely interesting and well-informed
posts from him in times past about an amazing array of unusual, rare,
and beautiful (to me) species, and he's written an entire book about
snowdrops. So I'm certain there is something to them. Maybe if I lived
in a region where they grew well and tried a bunch of them, I'd see. I
like daffodils/narcissus a lot and try to grow a whole bunch of
different kinds especially to see what will grow here. And yet, I've
been sent images of the latest greatest cultivars and sometimes I
wonder why they are so magnificent to the people who sent them to me.
I've also collected a number of the bulbocodium type species and
subspecies from various BX offerings over the years. I'm starting to
get blooms from a number of them now. And other than possible slight
differences in shade anywhere from pure white to butter yellow and
gradations in between, I don't see great differences in them. So I must
not be looking at the correct things about them. Live and learn...

I hope you'll reconsider submitting your article. Some of us would like
to read why Galanthophiles love their bulbs so much and how someone
like John Grimshaw can write an entire book on the subject!

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10

On Jan 21, 2004, at 11:48 AM, Mark Smyth wrote: