The scent from these shrubs this week has been wonderful. Wish you could all share it! They even look good! It really helps to lift my spirits in the dark days of winter. Spring must just be around the corner. 1. Daphne bholua Jacqueline Postill. 2. Daphne bholua Alba. 3. Daphne bholua Peter Smithers. 4.and 5. Hamamelis Arnold Promise.
Oh, golly, I hope so! I'll be looking for my snowdrops soon. Thanks for the photos, Luddite. You have brightened my cold and snowy day!
Snowdrops here in flower already. Bit worried about Peter Smithers pic looking too pale, normally deeper pink than Jacqueline Postill. So here is a different pic!
Those witch hazel blossoms are gorgeous! So colorful and exotic that they hardly look real. Gives me a kinda forsythia-like feeling.
Daphne bholua without cultivar names have been appearing in outlets here during recent years. I have not been impressed (I also knew the species from English books and saw it flowering in England before seeing it here). While it certainly has specialist appeal I don't think there's any danger of it supplanting the powerfully fragrant and lower-growing, denser evergreen D. odora 'Aureomarginata' in local gardens. The witch hazel cultivar belongs to H. x intermedia and is named after the Arnold Arboretum in Massachusetts. The uninitated often mis-call it 'Arnold's Promise', as though it commemorates the election of the Governor of California.
I agree that Daphne odora Aureomarginata has a wonderful perfume Ron, however it will not be flowering here for another 4-6 weeks. Daphne bholua flowers with us, from mid December. I find it amazingly scented, and its perfume can often be smelt many yards from the shrub. February 2009, RHS magazine has a short article on them, written by Roy Lancaster, titled "Himalayan Perfumier". "In it he examines several of the selections of his favourite winter- flowering shrub....." Sorry about the shorthand for the H. Arnold Promise. It is so much extra typing to include "x intermedia" when labelling all pics. It smells really citrusy.
