About the plant
The common snowdrop belongs to one of the most popularly cultivated bulbous plants. It is native to a huge area of Europe. Its beautiful flowers bloom traditionally at the end of winter. Galathus Nivalis was discovered by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, in his Species Plantarium in 1753. Since, the flower is snowy white, it is called Galanthus. It is a narrow leaved and delicate with milk-white hanging flowers. It is a familiar sight even in the British Isles and Norther France.
Where are Common Snowdrop found?
Common Snowdrop plants are mostly found in moist areas of deciduous woodland, but occasionally found in coniferous woodland, meadows, scrub, pasture, near rivers and stony slopes.
These plants are included in CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) Appendix II that are not under threat of extinction. But they need to be monitored to ensure their population are not endangered. These wild species trade was stopped in 1995 from Hungary.
The population in some areas remains under threat despite the restriction on trade of Common Snowdrop. For example, Common Snowdrop was widely traded in the East Carpathians few years back, but now its distribution reduced.
Why are they endangered?
Common Snowdrop are endangered because of increasing residential and recreational land use, which mainly destructs its primary habitat. It is included in the List of Rare and Disappearing Species of Ukranian Flora. The Climate Change is also threatening common snowdrop due to loss of micro and macro habitats.
Conservation assessments
Measures have been taken to check that the illegal collection of bulbs from the wild is being stopped. Trading of Galanthus, or bulbs, or live plants, or dead ones, is illegal without CITES permit. But CITES allows a limited trade of Galanthus of only three species, they are, G. nivalis, G, elwesii and G. woronowii from Turkey and Georgia. It is also monitored by IUCN Sampled Red List Index for Plants, which targets to provide conservation assessments for representative samples of the world’s plant species.
Tags: Common Snowdrop, Galathus Nivalis, conservation, CITES, IUCN, trading, extinction of common snowdrop, species, nearly threatened, threat, habitat, Carl Linnaeus, measures to protect common snowdrop
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