What’s Blooming in January 2012
It’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (GBBD) again. Thanks heavens! This is a great reminder for me to post a blog. I’ve been hit-or-miss at posting since I broke my collar bone last spring. It still hasn’t healed completely, and this has really restricted my gardening efforts. Whch has made me loath to blog. Not logical, but true! So the good news is, I’m blogging today in honor of GBBD, which happens the 15th of each month.
The bad news is, there are only two things blooming today. And one of them is a repeat of what was blooming last month. That would be the Christmas rose, or Helleborus niger, pictured above. So if you still aren’t convinced that you need a few of these beauties to spice up the winter garden, think again.
In the front yard, I have another Hellebore, commonly called the Lenten rose, Helleborus orientalis Brandywine(TM), that is taller and later blooming than the Christmas rose. It blooms in early spring. Both of these perennials grow and bloom well in dry shade under trees - once they are established, of course. And the handsome evergreen foliage looks good in the other three seasons, too. So there is no excuse not to try one, especially if you have a difficult dry shade spot in the garden!
This is witch hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia ’Arnold Promise’. The yellow winter blossoms look terrific in front of the blue spruce tree, don’t you think? This shrub can bloom any time from December thru February, depending on the weather. It is a vase-shaped plant growing slowly to about 12 or 15 feet tall, and has interesting leaves with fair yellowish fall color. An extract of the witch hazel plant is used medicinally as a skin tonic, but ‘Arnold Promise’ is mainly used as a landacape plant that looks good in every season.
Happy Gardening!
Hello Professor. So, these yellow “octopus-looking” growths are blossoms? (Meaning flowers) And they’re able to grow within the winter season? That’s pretty impressive! When you say it grows leaves, do you mean that that’s what is present during the rest of the years’ months? Or is the tree bare for majority of the year? My last question is, even though it’s labeled as a shrub, it can still grow to be that tall? It might as well be a tree, but is it not labeled as a tree because it has growth from the base of the trunk, unlike “trees”?
P.S. Nice photography! I agree, the contrast of the dark green behind the yellow blossoms is really nice! It portrays winter nicely.
Yes Sarah, you are looking at the flowers! And it is pretty special that the plant blooms in the winter. In spring, the leaves emerge along with all of the the deciduous tree leaves. In fall, they turn yellow and drop. But the flower bud is all formed and ready to open when the time is right – depends on the weather, but usually some time right around now. It is considered a large shrub or small tree – kinda in between. If you prune it to a single trunk, it looks more like a tree. But I like it better as a multi-stemmed shrub.