Galanthus open during snowdrop season for the National Gardens Scheme (NGS) and in Scotland for Scotland's Gardens. Colesbourne Park in Gloucestershire is one of the best known of the English snowdrop gardens, being the home of Henry John Elwes, a collector of Galanthus specimens, and after whom "Galanthus elwesii" is named. Numerous single- and double-flowered cultivars of "Galanthus nivalis" are known, and also of several other "Galanthus" species, particularly "G. plicatus" and "G. elwesii". Also, many hybrids between these and other species exist (more than 500 cultivars are described in Bishop, Davis, and Grimshaw's book, plus lists of many cultivars that
Galanthus nivalis (flowering stalk), which bears at the top a pair of bract-like spathe valves joined by a papery membrane. From between them emerges a solitary, pendulous, bell-shaped white flower, held on a slender pedicel. The flower consists of six tepals, also referred to as segments. The outer three are larger and more convex than the inner ones. The inner flower segments are usually marked on their outer surface with a green or greenish-yellow V- or U-shaped mark (sometimes described as "bridge-shaped") over the small sinus (notch) at the tip of each tepal. The inner surface has a faint green mark covering