Beating the Cold: Four Fascinating Winter-Blooming Plants
Emily Ellis
When the landscape is gray and cold, seeing a colorful flower pop up from a bank of snow or sprout between icy paving stones can feel like magic.
It has less to do with magic, however, and more with the amazing ways that plants adapt to their environments. While most plants go dormant in the winter in order to conserve energy and avoid damage from freezing temperatures, others are able to withstand extreme cold by a range of incredible biological means. Plants that bloom when other flora is scarce have, naturally, attracted the interest of people for millenia, and winter-blooming plants are as deeply rooted in human culture and medicine as they are in the frigid ground.
If you’re looking for cold-fighting inspiration to get through the rest of winter – or are looking to add some particularly interesting winter-interest plants to your landscape – scroll down to read about four winter-blooming stars.
Snowdrops (Galanthus)
Snowdrops growing by a stone wall near oak spring.
Few sights are more welcome than snowdrops poking up through the snow near the end of a long winter. Here in Fauquier county (Zones 7A-7B), we typically spot them in early February, bringing much-missed color and life to Oak Spring’s landscape. Although delicate in appearance, the small flowers are quite tenacious, containing proteins that keep their tissues from freezing when temperatures plummet.
Widely naturalized in North America, snowdrops are native to Europe and the Middle East, where they are firmly established in folklore. According to Greek mythology, the flowers were first brought out of Hades by Persephone, and carried bad luck from the underworld with them. Negative connotations clung to them all the way up to Victorian England, where seeing a single snowdrop (they usually grow in clusters!) was considered a portent of death. They get a better rap in Catholicism, where the dainty flowers represent the purity of the Virgin Mary, and are traditionally used in garlands for Candlemas processions on February 2nd.
Like most flowers ingrained in our cultures, snowdrops have also been widely used for medicinal purposes. In recent years, the alkaloid galantamine has been researched as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)
Robert John Thornton, New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus Von Linnaeus, London, 1807
You might not want to plant this flower in your winter garden, but despite its rather pungent sent, Eastern Skunk Cabbage is one of the most remarkable cold-beating plants out there.
Eastern skunk cabbages begin popping up in marshy areas in late winter and early spring. They belong to a small, elite group of plants that are thermogenic, meaning that they can raise their temperature above that of the surrounding air – a mechanism thought to have developed to attract pollinators (other smelly plants in the arum family, such as the titan arum, also have this capability). During the winter when temperatures drop, the flower buds of the Skunk Cabbage can warm up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit by using energy stored in the plant’s underground rhizome, melting through snow and ice.
Photo by Sakaori via Wikimedia Commons
Thermogensis demands a lot of energy from plants: it is estimated that the skunk cabbage, when maintaining its heat against sub-freezing temperatures, uses as much metabolic energy as a small rodent or hummingbird, making its cold-fighting ability all the more extraordinary.
The plant also has a long history of medicinal use in North America, in particular as a treatment for asthma and other respiratory conditions. It has also made its way into literature: beloved late nature poet Mary Oliver penned an ode to the remarkable skunk cabbage in her 1983 book, American Primitive.
Hellebore (Helleborus)
Hellebore blooming outside the Oak Spring Garden Foundation gallery.
Sometimes called Christmas or Lenten roses, these beautiful flowers are actually members of the buttercup family. In warmer climates, they start blooming as early as December, and thrive in shady spots. Like snowdrops, they contain antifreeze proteins that allow them to bloom in cold temperatures.
Despite their innocent appearance, hellebores are quite toxic; their name comes from the Greek words for "food" and "to injure." In ancient Greek medicine, they were primarily used as a purgative to treat ailments ranging from intestinal worms to insanity. In the notorious Siege of Kirrha in 585 BC, the Greek army poisoned the city’s water supply with crushed hellebore, giving citizens such terrible diarrhea that the Greeks were able to quickly take over.
If you don’t use it to poison your enemies or treat intestinal parasites, hellebore is a pleasant addition to the winter landscape – just make sure to keep pets and small children away from those pretty flowers.
Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)
Witch hazel blooming at Oak Spring.
While the name comes from the old English word wiche (meaning “to bend”) and not a magic-wielding woman, there is certainly something magical about Witch Hazel, which puts on its spidery, flaming yellow flowers in the fall and continue to bloom through the dead of winter.
Pollination for winter-blooming plants is a challenge due to the lack of insects out and about, but witch hazel circumvents this problem by relying on an especially interesting pollinator. A group of owlet moths in the Noctuidae family serve as witch hazel’s primary pollinator, and have their own unique way of beating the cold : they raise their body temperatures by shivering in order to fly in search of food.
Catesby, Mark. The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. London, 1771.
The interesting facts about this winter-interest plant doesn’t end there, however. Native peoples used the bark and leaves of this widespread native shrub long before European colonization, and witch-hazel is still widely used today for its astringent and cleansing uses. Forked branches of witch-hazel have also been used traditionally as dowsing rods to search for belowground water, due to the powers attributed to the mysterious winter-blooming shrub.
Thank you to alumni resident Carson Ellis for her help with this blogpost!
Banner image by Sarah Causey