Description
(elwesii David Shackleton, Shackleton)
Galanthus David Shackleton is an excellent, usefully late-flowering elwesii selection.
The outer petals are a pristine and unblemished white of good thick texture, with rolled-in edges. The inners have green markings on each of the three petals, apical which seem pretty constant and basal which are slightly variable in both positioning and shading, according to establishment and age. This variability is natural and not some indication of “genuine” and “changeling” stocks, all of the variation can be seen in a clonal clump.
There is an apical mark which is emerald green and sharply defined in an inverted V shape (like a downwards-facing bow tie). The basal mark is slightly variable from yellow- or olive-tinged to almost emerald with just a nod towards olive. It can be diffuse or more sharply defined but never so much as is seen for the apical mark. It is usually separate from the apical mark, though sometimes it can extend and JUST touch it.
The tidy foliage is stiffly upright and quite narrow and behind the flower, the ovary has an olive tinge to it. I have seen it described in print as a hybrid (with no reasoning or evidence to support this) but Bishop et al, in the Snowdrop Bible, discount any hybridity. It was seemingly discovered in the garden of the eponymous plantsman at Clonsilla. Co Dublin in Ireland though the early history of its introduction to cultivation, apparently in the 1960s, is a little confused.
Preliminary Commendation by the RHS Joint Rock Plant Committee 2003.
for UK sales ONLY NOT available for export
Galanthus David Shackleton