This week, what I grew up calling snowdrops began to bloom. Their flowers, like tiny white bells, hang from green stems. They are one of the first flowers to bloom and can give February a foretelling of spring. They are also a gift from the past.
My earliest memory of them goes back to my childhood and my grandmother. Snowdrops were one of her favorite flowers, and I have a vase she made as an art student at Newcomb College in 1909 that is decorated with snowdrops. The flower beds of our yard were outlined with them. She had dug up bulbs at a 230-year-old family home place in Virginia and transplanted them to family homes in Columbus. Interestingly, though, snowdrops were never cut and used for inside floral arrangements.
Snowdrops and related snowflakes are flowers with an amazing heritage. They have been popular flowers in American gardens for more than 250 years. Often thought of as an old southern garden plant, they were actually popular from New England south. The February 4, 1797, New London, Connecticut, Weekly Oracle reported that “Already now the snowdrop dares appear …(and) Had chang’d icicle into a flower.” An article on flowers in an 1795 Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper, the Columbian Herald reported “Snowdrops expanded February 11.” In the spring of 1823 the Charleston Courier called the snowdrop “the early herald of warmth and of verdure (that is fresh green vegetation).”
The history of snowdrops and snowflakes go much further back than the 1700s. The two plants look much alike with the most noticeable difference being snowdrops tend to begin blooming in February while winter is still with us but snowflakes tend to bloom in early spring or March. They were both popular garden flowers in medieval Europe and England. There is even a story that medieval monks from Rome brought the first snowdrops to England.
The flowers are so similar that in the 1500s the noted herbalist John Grard called the snowdrop “the Early Blooming Bulbous Violet” and the snowflake “the Late Blooming Bulbous Violet”.
Although the flowers had no herbal or medicinal value, they were popular in the gardens of monasteries. There are references to the flowers as early as the 1400s, when they were cherished for their beauty and associated with the Virgin Mary. Stories and legends arose surrounding them. One of the more interesting legends concerned Adam and Eve. After God removed them from the Garden of Eden, He created snowdrops. They were His sign to them that each year winter would end and spring would soon follow.
As to why my grandmother would not cut them with other flowers to bring inside, it was considered bad luck to do so. Some believed that it was a tradition relating back to the flower being associated with Mary. More likely is that in the 1700s and 1800s they were the flowers that people would plant around the graves of children and infants. In 1821, the Edinburgh Magazine ran an article on the proper decoration of graveyards. It called the snowdrop “the earthly cradles of infancy and childhood.” It was the snowdrops association with graveyards that probably discouraged its use inside.
There are other gifts from the past all around us. They are the more than 650 historic buildings in Columbus. Mississippi’s state wide historic preservation organization, the Mississippi Heritage Trust, was founded at a meeting in Columbus 25 years ago under the leadership of the late Sam Kaye. On Thursday and Friday of this week, the Mississippi Heritage Trust will celebrate that anniversary with a series of events and programs downtown and at Mississippi University for Women.
Rufus Ward is a local historian. Email your questions about local history to him at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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