Out of season flowering

OK, we've had a fairly miserable summer.  April was good, May and June generally cold, damp and disgusting, July a combination of a few nice days intermixed with a good many rotten ones.  August, so far, started all right but has now deteriorated.  In fact, it's windy and raining as I write.  But I didn't think it was bad enough to start winter flowering plants into bloom.

So I was a little surprised to see a little patch of yellow when looking out of the living room window this afternoon.  Dodging the showers, I went out to confirm that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.  I was right.  Jasminium nudiflorum, the rather lax but easily trained as a wall shrub winter jasmine, was flowering.  Not just one flower but a whole branch was developing it's soft yellow tubular flowers.

Jasminium nudiflorum - taken during its more normal winter flowering

My plant is trained against an east wall and has never previously flowered before late November.  So why is it flowering now?  More to the point, is it likely to make a habit of this?  If so, it will disrupt my carefully planned (OK, accidentally thrown together) sequence of winter jasmine flowering in, would you believe, winter and Clematis texensis 'Princess of Wales' winding its way through the hanging stems for summer and early autumn interest.

I could, of course, put it down to the capriciousness of the Gods and sacrifice another burnt offering to propitiate them.  Another round of toast should do it.  Unfortunately, I was trained as a scientist so I tend to look for more rational explanations.  And my curiosity was piqued when I realised that in the front garden my reliably May - and only May - flowering Crinodendron hookerianum was also producing new buds and had already opened some of it's lovely red lantern flowers.  In August.

Crinodendron hookerianum

In temperate climates, with their distinct seasons, flowering is normally triggered by a combination of day length and/or temperature.  Here in Plymouth we had an early, unusually warm spring.  We've had very variable weather since then.  Flower buds that would normally be initiated as the day length shortens after mid summer but only slowly develop for flowering in winter - the jasmine - or late spring - the crinodendron - have been hastened into blooming out of season.  It shouldn't affect the normal flowering, there is plenty of time for things to settle back to normal.

Either that or we're all doomed.  Better warm up the toaster just in case.