This tiny flower called "Blausternchen" - little blue star (in German) - belongs to the genus Scilla which has dozens of different species of pretty spring flowering bulbs. Most spread easily when left to thrive undisturbed.
It is related to the more well-known Scilla hispanica (now called Hyacinthoides hispanica), which turns large areas of English woodland and parks blue in April and May.
Scilla mischtschenkoana is the earliest of these Scilla, in some years coming out before the snowdrops. It is eager to show its face to the earliest sunrays: its leaves push through the surface wrapping a ready-made finished blossom. One often sees its flowers already opening when barely above the dirty ground, sometimes looking a bit shoddy and torn already before fully open. Don't they know, they should be patient and wait until their nice slender stems have grown to show off the beautiful petals with the fine blue lines? Stems will elongate later like tulips in a vase. Each stem carries several white "stars". I am always surprised by this behaviour and wonder whether I did something wrong last year that they are stuck in the ground. But the stems will reliably grow longer later on in the month.
Its difficult name comes from the Russian botanist P.I. Mischtschenko, spelt with the strange kyrillic letter Щ that needs seven characters in German pronunciation "schtsch".
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