This is the snowdrop most likely to be encountered on woodland walks and the species most frequently grown in gardens. The Common Snowdrop Galanthus nivalis is a hardy plant, native to parts of Europe from the Pyrenees eastwards to Ukraine, where it favours shaded, sloping woodland and commonly grows alongside trees such as oak, ash, and elm. Although non-native to the UK, it is a much-loved species. The exact date of its introduction is unclear, but it was known in cultivation in Britain by 1597 and had appeared in the wild by 1778.
Befitting its common name, the Common Snowdrop is the most widely cultivated of all Galanthus species, with an extraordinary number of cultivars and forms available. It has also been used extensively in hybridisation and may, when growing close to species such as Galanthus plicatus, give rise to hybrids in the wild.
If you encounter snowdrops growing in great drifts in churchyards, woodland, or on country estates, they are, in most cases, nivalis.
Identification
In a wild state, Galanthus nivalis is the only snowdrop occurring in the UK with narrow, glaucous leaves – less than the width of your little fingernail – and applanate (opposing) vernation. Look a little closer, and you’ll often notice that these narrow leaves twist slightly to one side as they mature. Compared with the other snowdrop species found wild in the UK, it is quite distinctive: Galanthus elwesii has broad, blue-grey leaves; Galanthus woronowii has bright green leaves; and G. plicatus shows characteristic pleating along the margins. Easy peasy.
When it comes to the flowers, the typical form bears a simple inverted V-shaped mark on the inner petals, although, as you’ll see under varieties, this can vary considerably.
In cultivation, G. nivalis can be confused with a handful of other narrow-leaved snowdrops, though these are relatively rare. The only other common species with glaucous leaves and applanate vernation is Queen Olga’s snowdrop Galanthus reginae-olgae. Crucially, however, this species usually shows a pale, silvery stripe running down the centre of the leaf. In addition, G. reginae-olgae subsp. reginae-olgae flowers in autumn, well before the typical flowering time of G. nivalis. The same is true of the rare but superficially similar Peshmen’s snowdrop Galanthus peshmenii – a collector’s species that flowers in autumn before the leaves are visible.
Varieties
There are quite literally hundreds, if not thousands, of G. nivalis varieties in circulation, and without a collector’s eye, many can appear very similar, differing only in subtle details. Keeping things broad, some representative forms and cultivars include:
Viridescent forms of G. nivalis, in which the flowers are variously marked with green. Well-known examples include ‘Viridapice’, ‘Modern Art’, and ‘Green Tear’, though similar variants are often found in the wild.
G. nivalis ‘Sandersii Group’, the famed “yellow snowdrop”, first encountered in Northumberland, in which the usual green markings on the inner petals and the colour of the ovary are replaced by yellow.
G. nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’, the familiar double-flowered form that is regularly encountered among wild and naturalised populations.
Confusion Species
We covered the differences with G. reginae-olgae above, but a more likely source of confusion is Galanthus × valentinei, the hybrid between G. nivalis and G. plicatus. This hybrid is widespread in cultivation and also occurs frequently among naturalised populations. It typically has broader leaves than G. nivalis, with shallow pleats towards the base, though these are not as pronounced as in G. plicatus.
G. × valentinei has been extensively cultivated, but one form that appears with some regularity and may escape across the garden fence is Galanthus ‘Atkinsii’. Discovered by the Gloucestershire nurseryman James Atkins and introduced in the 1860s, its exact parentage remains unclear, though it likely includes G. plicatus. As Mick Crawley notes, this cultivar can often be recognised by its long, drooping outer petals.
