Will 2012 be an Echium year?
Some years are called Echium Years at VBG, these are when we get an unusually large number of Echium pininana in flower simultaneously. We’ve not had a good Echium Year for a while due to the dreadful winters of 2009-2011. I’m told that chances of the three in a row we’ve had were 1 in 64 000, so looking forward to a good show in 2012. There are hundreds ready to go in the Mediterranean:
I’ll do a comparison picture in May. Meanwhile a recent introduction, Echium bethencourtianum, an endemic of Las Palma, is flowering in late November 2011 and is covered in bees:
