Crocus March 2015

[Melvyn Jope]

Crocus biflorus ssp alexandri Northern Greece last week.

[Melvyn Jope]

Crocus orphei Northern Greece last week.

[Steve Garvie]

Tony and Melvyn, these are very nice images of some wonderful Greek Crocus!!!

[ian mcenery]

Nice shots Tony and Melvyn. These again from last week

Crocus chrysanthus
Crocus orphei
Crocus alexandri a dark form
C alexandri mixed forms including lightly stippled ones

[Maggi Young]

Crocus heaven in these pictures.

[Janis Ruksans]

To find what is true Crocus biflorus shortly ago I visited Italy. Here picture made  by Filippo Dimatteo catching a moment when I try to select some from millions of flowers
The next is typical C. biflorus in Basilicata, Italy
Then returning to doubles - some double chrysanthus flower.
When I was much younger I saw mixed seeds of so named Crocus chrysanthus cultivars. One of best selections from those is Snow Crystall. When I offered it in catalogue - request was so large, that remained only smallest corms and this spring is the first nice blooming after some interruption.
The last is Crocus balansae - collected in Turkey, between Tavšanly and Inegol

[Janis Ruksans]

I'm not great "fan" of tommies but this seedling selected by John Grimshaw is fantastic.
Of course here started blooming of mine Carpathian Wonder and blooms
some seedling of it, too.
The last are former "albiflorus". The taxonomy of them changed dramatically but I hadn't time to study properly last papers. Now epithet albiflorus is aplied to that which earlier we named as vernus. Those two are selections from former "albiflorus".

[Maggi Young]

 Janis: Very good portrait of you by Filippo Dimatteo - "rhapsody in blue"

[Rimmer de Vries]

Finally we are getting a break from the sub zero ºF  (-20º-30ºC) weather and since last Saturday we have had sunny days above freezing.
the frame was opened and within a few hours these were blooming Saturday March 6

C. leichtlinii
C. biflorus ssp. crewei JJA 034.1150 ex Turkey Denizli
C. sieberi Atticus "Amfiklia" CH 855

[ruben]

Stunning pictures Janis!
I really love you're  (vernus) albiflorus selection!

It must be such a pleasure to see 1000.... of crocusses in flower!

[Roma]

The stones and gorse twigs seem to have deterred the voles so I was very pleased to see Crocus 'Shock Wave has survived.  Crocus etruscus flowers were nipped off a couple of feet along the border so I used the hanging basket to thwart rabbits and deer.

[Janis Ruksans]

On the first - one of Crocus atrospermus aquisitions. This is from locus classicus, but by HKEP could be wider distributed and really several aquisitions, quite distant but from same region has black seeds (key feature of this species) although by flower looks something different and I even got reclamation from one customer, who supposed that he got wrong plant. Really even on locus classicus are growing side by side two different forms by flower colour - dark - pictured here and light. May be this light must be regarded as another species, but it bloomed for the first time with me only this spring, so I still didn't decide - what it is. There were no intermediates seen in wild. Last spring I revisited locality and saw only last flowers of dark form.
Then two seedlings of Crocus "chrysanthus" from near Akseki - both from my favourites, could be hybrids with some of "biflorus"as - both species are growing side by side.
And last two - Crocus simavensis from simav ridge. Basal rings of that has needle like tooth even longer than 10 mm. Nothing similar was seen between other biflorus.

[Thomas Huber]

Janis, the vernus/former albiflorus on your last photo look very interesting - I have never seen such a coloured form, although I have seen millions of this species. Do you know their origin?

Last weekend was the first with temperatures above 10°C, and many plants have opened their flowers in my garden.

[Thomas Huber]

- some selected pink tommies from my lawn, replanted in the rockgarden
- another shady bed with good tommies and an interesting heuffelianus in the background
- Crocus neglectus from Liguria
- Crocus alexandrii 'Major'
- Crocus variegatus from Italy - formerly named C. reticulatus - showing much variation

[Thomas Huber]

Like in the last years I could find some interesting hybrids in my lawn and marked them for later replanting:
H1517 looks a bit like Dirk's 'Rainbow Gold'
H1507 has soft yellow tipps, which points for chrysanthus blood
Last photo shows my 2013 selections - note the small one in the right bottom