Melwood Welcomes 2022 www.melwood.org.uk As usual, the first two clumps of snowdrops put in an appearance on about New Year’s Day. The mass of plants were about on schedule and looking good by the start of February. Although we don’t have an exact map of where every clump is, it seems this year that there are rather more small groups scattered widely around the wood. The main areas have produced a really good show and been appreciated by large numbers of visitors to the wood. There are four species of Snowdrop on sale in most garden centres and hundreds of Galanthus plicata varieties derived from the three commonest species, all three of which occur in Melwood. The most distinctive species is Galanthus plicata, which has larger and broader leaves than the other two and frequently, larger blooms. In Melwood we have a single clump of a distinctive and unusual variety of G. plicata with unusually long petals. Its origin remains a mystery. Winter Aconites were once restricted to just one area, which still persists, although now rather overgrown; a job for the brush-cutter when the aconite growth has fully died down. Elsewhere, a few individual plants have shown up remote from the original clump and this year there seems to be even more scattered individuals. Two groups that were present last year have expanded and the prospect for further expansion seems good. The cultivated daffodils that have been in the wood since before it was a nature reserve are coming through strongly but the true wild bulbs that we have planted over the last couple of years are currently less obvious. Perhaps this is a lack of the hybrid vigour present in the cultivated varieties. Time will tell and they should be obvious when they flower. It is perhaps a bit early to assess whether the native English Bluebells have settled in, but with 100 planted in 2020 and another 100 in 2021, 14