Country diary: These flowers of public ritual are full of wild beauty

Attingham, Shropshire: Although they all seem more or less the same, snowdrops have subtle nuances of shape and colour

Galanthophile: an enthusiastic acolyte, processing, dog attached, in the rites of spring, with an occult knowledge, enchanted, gathering photographs of woods whitewashed with snowdrops. Galanthus (milk flower) is the botanical genus containing about 20 species of snowdrops native to Europe and the Middle East. From only a few species grown widely there are hundreds of named varieties to excite the galanthophiles.

At Attingham Park, signs say that there are only two types of snowdrops flowering in the wood: Galanthus elwesii – the larger snowdrop that ranges from Ukraine across Turkey into Syria; and Galanthus nivalis, Flore Pleno – a double-flowered form of the common snowdrop found throughout Europe, except the far north. This double form has a funky little flower with a muddle in the middle of its petal-like structure and bits missing.

Flore Pleno is usually sterile and cannot form seeds, but it does produce a lot of pollen which can find its way into the wider population and hybridise with other G. nivalis plants; it can also cross the line with other species of snowdrops. In the 1990s, a double form of G. elwesii was found in Shropshire and called Godfrey Owen, after the husband of Margaret Owen who discovered it.

Although they all seem more or less the same, snowdrops have subtle nuances of flower shape and colour – there are green ones and yellow ones – differences in leaf size and colour, flowering times. They invite the curiosity of those who love to discover the small signifiers of a much bigger story. Although the snowdrop narrative is always framed by references to when they were first cultivated or mentioned in literature and an assumption that they’re not indigenous or maybe they are native, it is not their legitimacy that is important but their presence.

Whether spread by streams, floods, nuns, gardeners or owners of stately homes such as here at Attingham, snowdrops are full of wild beauty in the story of culture and cultivation. They have become a flower of public ritual. They fade, to vanish into a seasonal amnesia, until the end of next winter when they awake the galanthophile in us.

• Country Diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary