Early Flowering Treasures

There are so many exciting flowers appearing every day in the garden now that I wish it would slow down a bit so that I could savour each one.

Iris bucharica

I have always loved the difficult Juno irises and wished that I could grow them. They are notoriously tricky to grow. But there is is one Juno that is easy and it is a delight.   Iris bucharica is a small growing iris; it is about 16 inches tall. It comes from Uzbekistan where it grows in the mountains. It was introduced into this country in 1901. It has plenty of fragrant yellow and white flowers growing from the axils of the leaves. You can see that there are plenty of buds to open. It likes a sunny position and free-draining soil. Putting the photo up here, I see that the flower has been nibbled so something else likes it too.

I love Muscari and all the little spring flowers with bell shaped flowers. Still on the yellow theme, here is the yellow Muscari macropetalum which is lovely.

Muscari macropetalum

I like to have a pot of the deliciously fragrant Muscari macropetalum  ‘Golden Fragrance’ in the greenhouse. It is lovely to be able to bring it into the house when it is in bloom.

I have been very disappointed with this long awaited  Muscari  ‘Pink Sunrise’. As you see it is hardly pink at all.

I have more lovely Muscari coming on for a further post. But my next plant although the flowers are muscari-like is something quite different. Synthyris missurica var. stellata is a woodland flower which likes a rich, moist soil. I love its large, blue flowers and its round leaves with serrated edges.

Synthyrsis stellata

Still on the Muscari-like flower theme, I recently bought a plant labelled: Heloniopsis umbellata. I have never seen it before and I can never resist something rare.  It has pink flowers, a bit like a large muscari.

Heloniopsis umbellata

The rosette of leaves is similar to that of  Ypsilandra thibetica which I wrote a post about in January. The flowers look quite similar too, only more bell shaped.
 The following is  the photo I took last year of the ypsilandra; this year it does not look quite as good, it only has four flowers.

Ypsilandra thibetica

 When I looked up Heloniopsis on the internet the flowers didn’t look like mine, they looked just like the tufty ones of ypsilandra, so now I am confused. Perhaps they are closely related.

 Another plant I love at the moment is Corydalis solida. ‘Corydalis’ means ‘crested lark” in Greek which is a pretty way of describing the flowers. It seeds around and  the lovely thing is you never know what colour flowers you are going to get. I started out with  some purple ones and named varieties like the pink: ‘Beth Evans’ and this Corydalis ‘George Baker’ which  is a lovely red colour. Now I have corydalis coming up all over the place in different shades.

Some of the Epimediums are in bloom now. I hope you remembered to cut the old leaves off yours before the flower stalks appeared. Every year I think of it a bit late and lose a flower head or two which is really annoying.  The leaves are a lovely, bronzey colour in winter but now they obscure the flowers if they are left on. Soon you will get lovely fresh new ones appearing and you want to be able to enjoy them.  The first one to come into flower for me is this primrose yellow one; Epimedium x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’.

The orange one is lovely too. It is called Epimediumx warleyense ‘Orange King’

Epimediums are woodland plants and their delicate flowers are a joy ins spring. There are many beautiful varieties and I will show you a few more of mine in another post.

There are so many lovely plants to write about at this time of the year and more coming out each day, but that will do for now because the sun has come out and the garden calls.