Galanthus elwesii 'Don Armstrong'

Galanthus elwesii 'Don Armstrong' is a big, bold poculiform snowdrop with real presence. In a poculiform, the inner segments take on the size and shape of the outers and lose their green markings, so instead of the usual three-and-three you get six pure white segments, which gives a really clean, elegant flower. Poculiforms are rare enough in G. nivalis, but to find one in the larger, more robust G. elwesii certainly makes it a lot more special. There are more G. elwesii poculiforms available now, but when 'Don Armstrong' was named, it was very rare indeed.

It comes from British Columbia in Canada and is named after Don Armstrong, a great Canadian plantsman who sadly died in 2000. Brian Ellis tells me that Don opened his garden of treasures to friends and shared his plants very generously, and in 1995 he gave Pam Frost a collection of snowdrops. Among them were 'Rosemary Burnham', which Don had introduced, and one labelled simply Galanthus 'Poculiformis'. That one turned out to be a tall, vigorous G. elwesii with glaucous leaves and an elegant habit, carrying a poculiform flower of six white segments with no inner segments or markings at all. Once it was shown to be distinct, Pam Frost, with the help of John Weagle, introduced it and named it for Don.

It has the broad, grey-green leaves typical of G. elwesii, and as the flowers mature, especially on a sunny day, the segments open right out until they're almost horizontal, which is a lovely sight. It flowers here in the North West in early February.

Brian Ellis wrote in the newsletter about the clump of 'Don Armstrong' he grows in a lattice pot sunk into his border. He left it a year too long without dividing, and the flowers began to suffer, with narrow outer segments instead of wide, full ones. When he lifted it, the bulbs had burst the pot, which had to be cut away, and he counted 32 of them, which shows just how quickly it bulks up.

Sources
Some of the background here comes from Freda Cox, A Gardener's Guide to Snowdrops; Brian Ellis (by email, October 2026); and Brian Ellis, 'Pots of Advice!' (HPS Galanthus Group newsletter, Autumn 2021).