Chimonanthus praecox is a shrub whose popular name Winter Sweet suggests an eagerness to please, which experience proves to be utterly incorrect. Indeed, the plant is miffish in the extreme, flowering indifferently on one soil, yet in the next plot burgeoning into pale yellow, sweetly scented flowers all down the leafless branches in March.
Of the larger-flowered garden hybrids there must be a plant to suit every taste – large, medium or small flowers in pink, purple, blue or white. I only include a selection here for like legion they are many.
No climber does more to lift the grey pall of February than Jasminum nudifforum. The yellow flowers on a north or west wall brave snow or arctic frost with equanimity Over a low wall, on a trellis, clipped as an ornament to the front lawn, few soils or situations reduce Winter Jasmine to despair. Each flowering shoot should be cut back in April to within 2 shoots of the base.
Glorious in flower, on occasions regally temperamental, this richly endowed genus must surely lay strong claim to contain the most beautiful climbers ever to grace our gardens. As I stand each spring under a 30-ft. high hawthorn through which has intertwined a Clematis montana Elizabeth I would be the last to disagree. The white of the hawthorn and pink of the clematis intermingle to make the complete floral curtain.
The fruits, called mother-of-cloves, are oblong fleshy drupes, usually shortly tapering at each end, reddish-purple in colour, 2.5-3.5 cm long and 1.2-1.5 cm in diameter. They are surmounted by the four enlarged fleshy calyx lobes. They usually contain only a single seed, but may be rarely two-seeded. There is a thin fleshy pericarp about 2-3 mm thick. The seed, with a purplish testa, is oblong and rounded at both ends, about 2 cm long, with two large cotyledons and no endosperm.
