Six on Saturday. True Blue.

If you call up about it , truthful blue flowers are quite rarefied , the peak listed by nursery men as blue are very often shade of mauve or purple . In fact there is no down paint in the works public and colours that come out disconsolate to us are in reality switch of violet or purpleness . To make flowers look blue , plants carry out some sort of biochemical illusion using carmine pigments called anthocyanins . I have read the skill but I ca n’t get my head labialize it , it is magic to me . Blue flowers are universally appealing , as long as they are naturally gentle and not the hideous dyed gillyflower and even orchids that you sometimes see for sale in supermarket . The perpetrators of this offence against plants involve locking up .

The blue flowers of spring are particularly magical . days ago I sorted out the confusion in my creative thinker about the names of the most gorgeous early - spring blue flowers ; the little bells ofScilla lucilliaeand the starry flowers ofChionodoxa forbesiiby reminding myself that chionodoxas do n’t hang their head , but have their chins up ; I know it ’s not quite chin , but if you slur ‘ chion ’ a spot it sound like it . Chionodoxais a adorable Grecian countersign meaning the ‘ Glory of the Snow ’ which is a minute misleading as here they are flower away now and we do n’t usually get snow in April . Anyway no matter where they point their chins the arrangement of their anthers and filament are quite different if you look at them intimately .

But now after capture my caput round out the differences I find that chionodoxas have been subsume into theScillagroup anyway . But this is handy when doing Six on Saturday as I can count these as one and still have five more blue flowers to indite about . But first , I am going to cheat a fleck and show you howChionodoxa forbesiicomes in a pretty shade of pink too .

Chionodoxa forbesii ‘Pink Giant’

Chionodoxa forbesii ‘ Pink Giant ’

I be intimate the pretty , starry flower of the Turkish Squill , Scilla bithynica . They are produced in pyramidal racemes of starry flowers .

Scilla bithynica

Scilla lucilliae

Chionodoxa forbesii ‘Pink Giant’

Still on the theme of sky blue bloom I have creeping carpets ofOmphalodes cappadocica‘Starry Eyes ’ . If this name is a bit of a taste for you , its coarse name is ‘ Navelwort ’ but I have no hand truck with common flower epithet , specially one as atrocious as that . This plant does estimable in dappled shade .

Omphalodes cappadocica‘Starry eyes ’

The flowers of Omphalodes look rather like Forgetmenots as do those ofBrunnera macrophylla . There are several variegated miscellany of this and I bulge off with ‘ Jack Frost ’ , appear Glass ’ and several others . They have all seed around now so they are quite wide-ranging .

Chionodoxa forbesii

Brunnera macrophylla‘Jack Frost .

Grape Hyacinths fan out around everywhere too and can become a nuisance but there are some very refined ones which stay in prissy clumps without develop everywhere .

Muscari armeniacumspreading happily in a corner of a bound bed .

Chionodoxa forbesii ‘Pink Giant’

Muscari armeniacum‘Mountain Lady ’ is a much smarter and quite fresh variety with bicolour flowers .

Muscari armeniacum‘Mountain Lady ’

I have a lovely gunpowder juicy one which Jenny Robinson found in Cyprus . It is calledMuscari latifolium‘Jenny Robinson ’ , but to confuse matters it is sometimes called ‘ Baby ’s Breath ’ . To confuse matters even more it is very similar toMuscari‘Valerie Finnis ’ . The only difference I can see is that Jenny has slightly across-the-board , tidier leaves .

Scilla bithynica

Muscari neglectum‘Jenny Robinson ’

I am going to includeBellevalia pycnanthain with myMuscaribecause it looks just like it and in fact it used to be calledMuscari paradoxum . It is very colored and advanced .

Bellevalia pycnantha

Omphalodes cappadocica‘Starry eyes’

I have a go at it daisy flowers and the sky blueAnemone blandais marvellous for naturalising and spreads around into great pool .

Anemone blanda

Veronica peduncularisis a mat - take shape herbaceous plant life that gets better each twelvemonth as it spreads into a large flannel-cake bearing Co blue flowers in bound . I grow mine next to the buttercup -yellowEuphorbia polychroma .

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Veronica peduncularis

So that ’s it . As I am link up in with the Propagator ’s pop Meme‘Six on Saturday’I have to limit my blues to just 6 specie . Except I will bend the rule just a little by set up a few more April vapours in a collage ; they are all so lovely it is hard to go away anything out . Today is glorious and in these troubling times we gardeners are lucky to be able to get out into our gardens and delight an abundance of wonderful spring flowers . Do see what all the other keenSix on Saturdayfans are up to at the minute .

50 Responses toSix on Saturday. True Blue.

Oh , I so consort with you on the true blues ! One of my favorites is Blue - Eyed Grass , in the same family as Irises . And the spring - flowering bulbs that you show here are gorgeous !

A good read , lovely pics

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All beautiful . You have some challenging Scilla species I have never heard of . For some grounds Muscari does not do well for me .

Some beautiful shades of blasphemous Chloris . My brunneras are not showing any signs of flowers yet . I ’m certain that they would normally be in flower by now . There is a most interesting chapter on blue in Eleanor Perényi ’s record book ‘ Green Thoughts ’ which I ’m sure you would enjoy .