OTHER DRYAD GROUPS
DRYAD GREEN GROUP
We are happy to finally be able to release some seedlings from our green breeding programme.
They will all be named for musical forms, to group them together, but there will only be a few clones selected for naming, as so many seedlings resemble the parents too closely. In other words, it will be a chamber orchestra rather than a philharmonic!
DRYAD CONCERTO
Bred from G.elwesii ‘Eilys Elisabeth Hartley’ x ‘Rosemary Burnham’.
DRYAD CONCERTO more closely takes after her mother, Eilys Elisabeth Hartley, inheriting the beautiful overall shape, similar to a crinoline skirt flaring out from the claw, sometimes likened to an old-fashioned lightbulb. The daughter, though, has a longer apple-green mark covering the apical half of the segment, with a narrow white margin and white spot at the tip. The long claw is shaded pale green.
On a warm day, the outers will open widely to show the prettily marked inner segments, which are almost wholly bright emerald green, paling just before the base, and becoming deeper around the sinus. The narrow white margin reaches inwards towards the midline just above the sinus, forming a ‘waist’, and separating out the different shades of green.
Dryad Concerto grows to about 20cm in flower, with broad leaves arching outwards towards their tips typical of its elwesii lineage.
DRYAD SONATA
DRYAD SONATA, in contrast to her sister, slightly favours her pollen parent, Rosemary Burnham, but is more heavily, and variously, marked with green. Similar in height to Dryad Concerto at 20cm, the leaves are broad, upright, and slightly twisted, with hooded tips.
The flowers are attractively bell-shaped, constricting into the long claw, with the margins of the distal half of the outer segments distinctively rolled upwards, giving the segment an unusual spear shape, or ‘quilled’ appearance.
The outer segment mark covers almost the whole of the surface, except for a prominent white spot at the apex, which is common to most of the seedlings from this cross. The deep apple-green colouring is solid at the shoulder and apex, dissolving into lines following the textured furrows in between.
The inner segments, similar to Dryad Concerto, are almost wholly bright emerald, darker over the sinus, and with a paler ‘waist’ constriction between the two shades.
DRYAD SNOW GROUP
DRYAD BLIZZARD
DRYAD BLIZZARD is the inaugural member of the brand new ‘Dryad Snow’ series of true poculiform snowdrops named for their exceptionally pristine bright white flowers.
The Blizzard lineage started in 2008, when I was generously sent seeds of a poculiform G. elwesii from Canada. When they flowered in 2013, none were poculiform, which was unfortunate but not unexpected. The seedlings were inter-crossed to produce 6 seeds. These F2 seedlings began to flower in 2017 and to my delight, the result was one perfect poculiform.
After 5 years evaluation, this has proved to be a tall and graceful beauty, growing to 30cm under glass, the leaves only half that height at flowering time. The dazzling, large flowers are in perfect proportion at 40mm long including the ovary, and open into an elegant parasol shape. A clump in flower in your garden will make a glorious and breath-taking focal point.
