Galanthus nivalis the snow", referring either to the snow-like flower or the plant's early flowering. The common name snowdrop first appeared in the 1633 edition of John Gerard's "Great Herbal" (in the first edition (1597) he described it as the "Timely flowring Bulbus violet"). The derivation of the name is uncertain, although it may have come from the German word "Schneetropfen", which was a type of earring popular around that time. Other British traditional common names include "February fairmaids", "dingle-dangle", "Candlemas bells", "Mary's tapers" and, in parts of Yorkshire, "snow piercers" (like the French name ""). "Galanthus nivalis" is widely grown in
Chlamydomonas nivalis "Uredo nivalis". Over the next century, many researchers disputed over whether these organisms were lichen, plants, alga, or animal. It was not until the early 20th century when researchers finally began to agree on the algal nature of the organism and gave its currently known name, "Chlamydomonas nivalis". In 1968 "C. nivalis" was officially recognized as a collective taxon. Unfortunately, due to the lack of sequencing techniques, reliance on visually examining similarly looking snow alga, and complicated life cycle of this species, errors continued to be made in classifying this and other species of snow algae. Today, "C. nivalis" has