March 8, 2020

Common Grape Hyacinth


Plants with bulbs have something extra to begin flowering fast and early. In a few days the flowering stalks of Common Grape Hyacinth (Muscari neglectum) came above ground and went up.





Its leaves, spreading horizontally, are thin and nearly cylindrical and present long before the plant flowers.





Common Grape Hyacinth looks very much like its cultivated garden counterpart, it is just a bit smaller and its round bell-shaped flowers are oval, not round.

The 'entrance' of those flowers has six, two times three, points of a paler blue, curved outwards.





Fruits appear in summer, they have each three lobes, and every lobe has two sides with between them a black seed. As most monocotyl plants, Common Grape Hyacinth can count to three and do some simple multiplication.




But it is coincidence there are six flowering stalks in this image. Apparently there are just six bulbs big enough to produce a flower.