A gorgeous picture of late snowdrops from FoSCP member Peter White.

Did you know that snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) are not native to the British Isles? They haven’t even been here a long time. They were brought from the continent in the 16th Century and introduced into Elizabethan gardens.

The first printed reference to snowdrops in Britain can be found in Gerarde’s Great Herbal, published in 1597, and they were not recorded in the wild until 1778, in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.

 

Conservation status: Listed as Near Threatened on the global IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.