Snowdrops Herald False Spring

Snowdrops are flowering beside summer annuals and cherry trees are thick with blossom. Find out what happens when seasons collide.

The mildest December for over 100 years has tricked plants in public gardens across the midwest and Eastern Seaboard into thinking it's Spring. The result is a rarely seen rush of mid-winter, late winter and spring flowers, with Daffodils, Tulips, Witch Hazels, Snowdrops, Camellias, Magnolias, Cherry Trees and Christmas Roses appearing all at once.

At Tower Hill Botanic Garden near Boston, where temperatures have hit 20 degrees above the seasonal average, a Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger) is flowering, a late January event usually, and Snowdrops (Galanthus) here are threatening to do the same, with shoots already above ground.

Their elegant ivory flowers don't usually appear here until the end of January. Even more surprising, they are already flowering at Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, where they weren't expected until March and in New York, at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, a Cherry tree in full flower is astonishing visitors.

Elsewhere, last year's annuals are still flowering and this year's Tulips are beginning to emerge. Most expert gardeners agree that this apparent chaos presents no great danger to plants, although a sudden cold snap could damage these premature flowers and diminish later displays.

More predictable January flowers include the scented and tattered flowers of Witch Hazels (Hamamelis) at Polly Hill Arboretum in Martha's Vineyard, which has one of the largest collections of the shrub in the country, Camellia Sasanquas and Japonicas at Huntington Botanical Garden and the Descanso Gardens, both in Southern California, which also has, at the Los Angeles Arboretum, the winter's first Magnolia flowers.

Snowdrops can also be seen at the Montrose Garden in North Carolina, which has a Snowdrop Walk.

The January birth flower is the Carnation.