Janis very nice hitticus forms mines did not flower yet. Did this subsp. also upgraded to species level or because of easyer to use one name then two?
Greatings....
Brian Mathew originally described C. hittiticus as species, but later lowered its level to subspecies status of reticulatus in his Monograph. I don't liked such merging although both species met and their area something overlap. I got sample collected on Gűlek-Bogazi in which both species occured. There were plants with black and with yellow anthers.
In paper of Gitte, Pettersen et al. about phylogeny of Crocuses we can see that Crocus hittiticus is closer to C. hartmannianus and on phylogenetic tree is placed quite far from typical reticulatus. This confirmed my opinion that both are separate species and I regarded them as such in my book, too.
Janis
