I will start with some colour, to make up for being so excited about leaves on my last visit. But my first colourful plant has its colour now in the stems - Variegated Tatarian dogwood, Cornus alba 'Creamedge'. A page at Cornus alba 'Elegantissima' habit: UIPLANTS says "This cultivar also goes under the name of 'Argenteo-marginata', but it calls the plant on that page Cornus alba 'Elegantissima'. Here are some rhododendrons in bloom. Rhododendron praevernum, which I just learned to recognize from my Stanley Park posting, though I have posted it before. But this time I recognized it without seeing a label. One of my favourites, R. barbatum, even though I couldn't see any barbs, as they were all covered up by the pesky flowers, which are actually shining very brightly in the first photo, not at all obvious in the thumbnail. Here is R. oreodoxa var. fargesii.
Magnolia zenii is in bloom now, visible from behind the shop as you drive in (though I didn't notice it from there until I was driving out). It's very cool, but it has a kind of strange brown colouring. Just across from the magnolia is Corylopsis pauciflora, buttercup winter hazel. It says "springtime" to me. Here are leaf buds on the Melliodendron xylocarpum at the entrance plaza, just because it's my favourite tree.
It's the end of March now. I was expecting to see the flowers more open on Magnolia zenii today, March 31, but it looks like it doesn't do open. Or what I think is probably the case, as soon as the flowers open, the petals fall, so what's on the tree doesn't seem open. I found a few that were sort of open, and on a branch hanging down at eye level to boot. Well, it's still March, so I'll add these magnolias. M. cylindrica, near the entrance plaza. I guess the star of the garden today has to be the Magnolia sprengeri 'Eric Savill' at the Ting at the end of the boardwalk. Douglas Justice wrote about this in his March 2018 in the Garden - UBC Botanical Garden blog: Note too the "the almost horizontal posture of its large, fuzzy, yellowish grey flower buds." I liked my today's photo of Melliodendron xylocarpum better than what I posted two weeks ago.
