The Snowdrop is an example of the way in which living organisms generate internal heat. This is one of the plants which, like the Broad Hellebore, may be found growing in clumps in small, clear hollows in the snow. It is the warmth generated by the plants which thaws the surrounding snow.

A very troublesome weed of grainfields, Creeping Thistle is also found in the wild in meadows, in thickets, and by the wayside, in lowland regions as well as mountains. This robust plant – as a rule more than one specimen is seen in the same field – stands stubbornly high above the grain.

The Snowdrop grows in flood-plains and broad-leaved forests, as well as thickets, from lowland to mountain elevations. It also grows wild, as an escapee, in the vicinity of parks and gardens. It is rarely found in the wild in the more northerly parts of Europe.

Henbane, a robust plant up to 80 cm high, is an annual or more often biennial herb, forming only a ground rosette of leaves the first year. The ornamental flowers (1) grow from the axils of the upper stem leaves. The fruit of Henbane is a capsule enclosed in a calyx with joined sepals and with a lid that bursts open when ripe. Inside are thousands of tiny seeds which are hard to distinguish from poppy seeds with the naked eye. Only on magnification do Henbane seeds show up as brownish, kidney-shaped, and pitted. They are light and fall out readily in a breeze.

Henbane is a plant of barren places, abandoned fields, waste ground, and roadsides and a weed of field crops, particularly in warmer regions. It is a frequent and unwelcome intruder, for instance, in poppy fields.

The species G. nivalis and its varieties are cultivated in gardens together with many other, mostly southern European snowdrops.