It’s salt! It’s snow! It’s blossoms!

Ornamental plum blossoms in fact.

Here we are in the last week of February and the plum trees on Vancouver’s streets are already speckled with blossoms.

Our winter has been mild. Of the 30,000 members of the Prunus genus on our streets, 11,000 of them are purple plums with various common names such as the Pissard plum and the night purple leaf plum. The majority of these trees are Prunus cerasifera ‘Pissardii’ or ‘Atropurpurea’, where ‘Atropurpurea’ describes the dark purple leaf colour. Ernest François Pissard (1850–1934), a French gardener and horticulturist employed by the Shah of Iran, discovered a plum with purple leaves in the late 18970s.

Many plants develop from bulbs: snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, irises, hyacinths, and gladioli. Daffodils are a national emblem of Wales and worn on St. David’s Day, March 1, to denote Welsh heritage. This clump of daffadowndillies is blooming in time.

And here’s a clump of dwarf irises, Iris reticulata. Also from bulbs. Notice the yellow and white nectar paths to make it easy for bee pollinators to find the pollen and nectar for their winter nourishment.

Early in February, we looked at a Viburnum tinus shrub, known commonly as laurustinus. Here’s a look at a different laurustinus shrub with many sparkly blue berries on display.

A row of Japanese pieris growing against a West End wall are in bloom. The long leaves are variegated, having white margins. Apparently, it’s a hardy variety known scientifically as Pieris japonica ‘Variegata’.

And finally, a Lenten rose, Helleborus x hybridus, looking lovely in the shade of a Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’ (mostly out of view).

It’s cold at the moment, occasionally reaching zero, but plants don’t mind, relying more on the length of the night, the hours of darkness, rather than the temperature, for knowing when to bloom, to leaf, to burst forth with colour. That ability is known as photoperiodism.