If we had a Biennials forum, I'd ask there. But we don't, so I hope folks here might help. A year ago I winter-sowed seeds of Canterbury Bells (Campanula medium), a beautiful biennial. By the fall I had two good-sized plants with of course just the basal rosette of leaves that characterizes biennials in their first year. But the amazing thing is that here in January in the dead of winter, other than rabbit damage during the growing season most of those leaves are still fairly green and fresh.

I'm curious to know: when these plants start growing again in the spring what will happen to these existing leaves? I can’t imagine that the plant will re-activate them and that they’ll start growing again to become part of the regular second-year growth. I think of herbaceous biennials as having the first year’s leaves die back entirely during the winter to be replaced by completely new leaves that begin growing in the spring from the now-strengthened root system. Maybe the fact that these leaves are still green in late January is but a deceit, and by late March they’ll be brown and gone?

Any thoughts or speculations about this?