Bright Blooms in Winter

Last Sunday afternoon we made our annual winter visit to the Missouri Botanical Garden. We spent a lot of time in the Orchid Show, but we also visited the Camellia display in the Linnaean House, the oldest greenhouse west of the Mississippi River. Many varieties of camellias as well as teas and begonias and ground covers are a warm sight on a cold day.

Something about these blooms, this one and the one above, remind me of the corsages we used to wear to high school dances. They were pink carnations, and these are so much more exotic.


The Missouri Botanical Garden was started by Henry Shaw, a British hardware merchant who made his fortune in St. Louis and then gave the city an incredible gift by creating a garden on his country estate, and planting it with all kinds of trees, bushes, and flowering plants. This was the first greenhouse and it still is in operation. A wonderful destination on a winter day.

The grounds outside the greenhouse also had plenty of orna- mentals. These grasses caught the rays of the sun as it slanted toward the west. This was about 24 hours ahead of the start of our Monday snow storm.


As a girl growing up in Oklahoma, I was familiar with the crepe myrtle bush that blooms so lavishly in summer. Over the years, hardier plants have been bred, and the winters in St. Louis have been milder over the past 20 years or so as well. So crepe myrtle is starting to flourish here. These seed pods are beautiful and help bring interest to the winter landscape.

A plant I often heard about, but have seldom seen, is witch hazel. The Garden has several varieties of witch hazel, and this was in bloom on a trellis behind the greenhouse. We savored the clean air and cool breeze for a few minutes and then started home. Walking to the car, we noticed the cloud formations overhead that I wrote about in last Monday's post. Monday night we had about 4 to 5 inches of snow. A lot of it is still around, although it has melted where the sun shines. Now we have another 2-4 inches forecast for Saturday night into Sunday morning. Even though we have so far escaped the monster deep snows others have seen (I'm thinking of Tulsa, and Dallas, and most of Kansas, not to mention Baltimore where a college friend measured over two feet on her deck) but we have had accumulating snow about twice a week for what seems like eons now. The beauty inside Henry Shaw's garden helps me remember that eventually Spring will come!