Big pink flowers on a leafless tree - Japanese magnolia

A tree in my frontyard has flowers and I can identify it now!

The tree has large pink or purple tulip like flowers. The search keyword "early spring" helps me a lot to narrow down the candidates dramatically. This one is called "Japanese Magnolia" or Saucer Magnolia. It is called "Mokuren(モクレン)" in Japanese.

It is interesting that it has lots of flowers but no leaves. I am pretty sure that it created a shade in summer because I had other flowers below and these survived well because of its shade. I should observe when this Japanese magnolia gets leaves.

It doesn't need much water. A care page said prune it after its flowers bloom. So, I should prune it after the flowers.

Tulips emerged

The shoots of Tulips that I planted last autumn emerged from the ground.

It took months before emerging and it requires cold winter before growing. I don't remember how many of them I planted, but at least five of them have been growing pretty well. The shoots of tulips are a lot bigger than I thought. Guessing from the size of the shoots, blooming would be in early April.

Another flower

In addition to the flower I blogged yesterday, there is an another kind of flower.

It looks funny as the flower locates right above the ground-level and it looks like it doesn't have a stem. It has beautiful purple and white petals.

I could find the name of the flower again with a few image searches. It is probably "Crocus Vernus". This is an early blooming flower with low maintenance needed. Good for full/part shade.

It grows from "corms". Every four years or so, split corms to propagate. The plant care seems pretty much the same as growing Muscari.

Blue flower with little bells - Muscari

It rains a lot in Bay area, but it is getting closer to spring. I started to see more plants are growing. I saw a few new plant in a flower bed of the backyard today. It has blue flowers which look like clusters of little blue bells.

I did an image search with [Blue flower little bells] and got "Muscari". More specifically, it looks like Muscari armeniacum and typically called as Grape Hyacinth. It is a perennial obviously as I didn't plant but it was there from last year. Originally it grows in Southeastern Europe to Caucasus. The name suggests that it was from around Armenia. It is a flowering bulb. It requires very little care. It blooms early spring and that's why I see the flower now. It grows to 6 to 8 inches tall (really?). It likes sun and is okay in partial shade.

A page says that to propagate, separate bulb offsets in summer, but what is a bulb offset? A bulb offset is a baby bulb which is produced next to a main bulb.