Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the snowdrops is:
Here are some lovely places to go and visit to see drifts of snowdrops although I don't think the other visitors were too impressed by me lying in the pathway taking macro shots last year!
Check out your local woodlands and local historic gardens.
At the moment, the trees still have some autumnal leaves either lying on the ground or still on the tree and these can act as a golden backdrop to the snowdrops.
The Great British Gardens site has also produced an extensive list of areas to visit so there is no excuse.
There appears to be some uncertainty as to whether snowdrops are native to Britain or not. They certainly grow freely in the wild; but also, all 'wild' snowdrops seem to be garden escapees. Indeed, if you find snowdrops growing wild in the middle of a wood, you can be almost certain that there was once a dwelling there. Snowdrops are generally spread by birds scratching the soil, incidentally dispersing the bulbs.
Remeber to try isolated flowers, light spotlighting drifts, a small depth of field, underneath the flowers looking up at the sky, against a dark background, against an autumnal background and use your spot meter on the snowdrop so you don't get blown highlights.
As there are over 100 species it should keep you busy for a while!
Have a look at BBC Gardeners World at the different species.
According to legend snowdrops first appeared when Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden, to a land where it was winter: cold, snowy, dark and barren. An angel consoled them by promising that spring would follow winter. As a token, he blew upon some falling snowflakes which, as they touched the ground, were transformed into snowdrops. In this way, Hope was born. Ever since then, snowdrops have appeared during the bleakest winter weeks as a sign of the better times to come.
Because of their presence in monastery churchyards, snowdrops share with other white flowers a folklore that foretells ill-luck if brought into the house. Richard Mabey, in his Flora Britannica (1996), records that in some parts of the country single flowers especially are viewed as death-tokens. Even today, many country people will not take snowdrops indoors, and the sight of a single snowdrop blooming in the garden is taken as a sign of an impending disaster.
One explanation was that they ‘look like a corpse in its shroud’ and grow so near the ground that they ‘seem to belong more to the dead than the living’ (Latham, 1878: 52-3)
In folklore, the snowdrop is meant to represent 'the passing of sorrow'.
In the West of England, it is believed that snowdrops cannot be brought into a house before the first chickens are hatched, or else all the eggs will be addled.
Galantamine, marketed under the brand name of 'Reminyl', is a medicine used today for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and works partly by increasing the amount of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine 2, which is typically deficient in Alzheimer's disease. However, unlike other treatments, galantamine also has a modulating effect on the brain's nicotinic receptors, increasing their effectiveness. Nicotinic receptors are thought to play a key role in attention, memory and learning.
Galantamine occurs naturally in several members of the amaryllis family (maryllidaceae). The alkaloid3 was first isolated from snowdrop (Galanthus spp, most notably G. woronowii). The idea for developing a drug from these species seems to have derived from the long-standing local use of them in a remote part of Europe. Apparently, during the 1950s a Bulgarian pharmacologist noticed people rubbing their foreheads with snowdrops (probably the leaves or the bulbs, as it's these and not the flowers, which contain galantamine) to ease pain.
Galantamine has been used throughout Eastern Europe for the alleviation of neuromuscular ailments, such as neuritis and neuralgia. It also acts as a muscle stimulant and, for example, it counteracts the effects of the muscle relaxant, curare. Galantamine has also been used for treating neurological conditions such as post-polio paralysis and myasthenia gravis. However, because of its effect in enhancing neurotransmission in the brain, the primary use of galantamine throughout Eastern Europe in the last half-century has been for the treatment of poliomyelitis. There is some indication that, for some time before this, peasant people had been using snowdrop bulbs to treat children suffering from poliomyelitis, who recovered without showing any signs of paralysis.
