In continuation from yesterday's blog

I daresay I now know more about snowdrops than I ever did about seaweed

Yes, prepare yourself for a selection of the delights of my learning, gleaned from dinner table conversation and eavesdropping, and whilst working outside digging alongside Claire

The snowdrop is of course the first plant that pokes its head through winter, the harbinger of spring. To the uninitiated, this might be all. To the galanthophile however, lover of snowdrops, it is a subject and object for endless discussion, collection, of historical and cultural anecdote and for social occasion, celebration and enjoyment. There are 19 'species' or versions of snowdrop , 22 'taxa' (sorry, can't remember that one, whether a version of species or something else entirely. hmmm...) and over 500 individual types of snowdrop known as 'cultivars'.

There are beautiful allegorical names for the snowdrop - Fair Maids of February, Candlemass Bells, White Ladies - which allude to its cultural and social significance, its appearance and seasonal arrival from the earth (at the time of traditional purification feasts). Galanthus, the 'proper', Latin name for snowdrop, means milk-flower; and 'snowdrop' itself (apart from describing in English the literal visual appearance of a snow-drop), comes from the German schneetropfen, a popular Renaissance-era tear-shaped earring.

In the names of the cultivars, symbolism continues; they are markers of events, people, and the namers' observation(s). Sophie North remembers a daughter killed at Dunblaine; Modern Art is "curious but not beautiful".

I wanted to send Modern Art to the Ruskin, my old art school, but I couldn't get hold of it; cultivars can be rare.

And expensive; so we enter a strange world of value and desire; a tiny plant will sell for £80, and others cannot be bought with money, "only love". It's a little like art.

Apparently, in the Victorian gardening world, it was possible to tell who was friends with who by looking at their ferns - and it's the same in the incestuous cult-clique of snowdrop growing-collecting-selling.

It's not just about the plant; there's a fascinating, and humorous social history behind the collecting of this small flower (indicated in some of the names of snowdrop cultivars), another world of fanatics and eccentrics, including Barlow, the 'King of galanthophiles', the Reverend "Takeaway" (Blakeway) Phillips ("ooh those Reverend gardeners... there's a book in that!") and an elderly gentleman pictured poking with his walking stick ("Just you put your stick away! My eyesight's not that bad!").

A customer here over the weekend, had to go up from the plant area to the gift shop to pay, to use her credit card. She took the plants with her, saying that people who love plants don't steal (that's not what I've heard).

To a snowdrop outsider like myself, there's pleasure watching the seriousness by which a tiny plant is taken. In the squabbling and delicious competitiveness of mostly well-to-do, elderly galanthophiles (but then there are the gay collectors and spouse pairings: husband collectors, women gardeners), and eccentric characters sending other people to buy their plants, allowing no-one to see them, but yet cataloguing them. Finally, that 'snowdropping', a word used to refer to the visiting of snowdrop gardens during 'the season' is also a word for the stealing of underwear from washing lines.

I laugh, and yet, I'm quite captivated (the enthusiasm of a person you live and work closely with, and respect, can be remarkably contagious). I find myself exclaiming at different shapes, names and markings of the 19 species, and making notes before I go to bed. I am, officially, a geek of geekness.

Goodnight.