Crocus October 2015

[ruben]

Nice to see al those nice crocus Janis!

Very nice that Crocus speciosus from Bakuriana! I visited the garden of Rik last summer, he grows so many Jewels!

That pink seedling of mathewii is really special!

[Boyed]

Janis, thanks for the interesting posts. I sdudied the photos with special interest, as it is my favourite autumn species. In regards to the white specimen. There was only one white, the cormplets might have been just mixed. It will not be difficult to check. If they are different plants they should have slight differences in appearance. if you can remember I have thrown away my cormlets of the white form by mistake. I planted the larger corm in the pot and kept in our apartment on the window seal for safety puposed, but during winter to my unluckiness, my son pulled of its leaves. I was very very frustrated. Fortunately, the corm didn't die, and I dug a very small replacment one, which I planted then in the garden in a well protected place. This year it produced very narrow leaves and normally vegetated. Hope to enjoy it blooming next year, if everything goes well. What a good thing is sharing. If you loose the stock, you have the opportunity to reintroduce it from friends.

[Cyril L]

Superb crocus Zhirair, Ruben and Janis.

Crocus gilanicus grown from my own seeds from plants ex Jean Wyllie, showing some colour variation.
Crocus pulchellus albus from Janis.  This does well in a lattice pot sunk in the open garden and has not been repotted for many years.

[Janis Ruksans]

Superb crocus Zhirair, Ruben and Janis.

Crocus gilanicus grown from my own seeds from plants ex Jean Wyllie, showing some colour variation.
Crocus pulchellus albus from Janis.  This does well in a lattice pot sunk in the open garden and has not been repotted for many years.

Sorry, Cyril, it is not gilanicus but most likely ordinar pulchellus. C. pulchellus albus is marwellous, it blooms with me, too, but I'm repotting my crocuses every year, so blooming is not so abundant.
Janis

[tonyg]

Superb crocus Zhirair, Ruben and Janis.

Crocus gilanicus grown from my own seeds from plants ex Jean Wyllie, showing some colour variation.
Crocus pulchellus albus from Janis.  This does well in a lattice pot sunk in the open garden and has not been repotted for many years.

It is not often I dispute Janis observations but the putative gilanicus looks like kotschyanus to me.  The yellow markings in the throat are W shaped, typical for kotschyanus.  Pulchellus has a solid yellow band.  Gilanicus and kotschyanus are close relatives, maybe this is a hybrid?  Gilanicus is known to cross easily with another close relative, autranii.  It's a fine crocus whatever it is!

[Janis Ruksans]

It is not often I dispute Janis observations but the putative gilanicus looks like kotschyanus to me.  The yellow markings in the throat are W shaped, typical for kotschyanus.  Pulchellus has a solid yellow band.  Gilanicus and kotschyanus are close relatives, maybe this is a hybrid?  Gilanicus is known to cross easily with another close relative, autranii.  It's a fine crocus whatever it is!

Yes, Tony, you are right. I thought kotschyanus but why I changed opinion - can't understand now. I just went to computer to correct my mistake and found that you already did this. In throat golden ring of typical shape, and not yellow throughout as it would be in pulchellus.

[Janis Ruksans]

Gilanicus is known to cross easily with another close relative, autranii.  It's a fine crocus whatever it is!

It cross with suworovianus, too - I found this by F-2 seedlings where came out great variation, inclusive some similar to suworovianus, too. So from autranii and gilanicus only vegetative or carefully hand-pollinated progeny can be correctly labeled as true species, and not easy to judge hybrid origin in F-1 generation. But the same can be observed between some of biflorus group, too. Crocus taselianus cross with some blue one and in F-1 appear some blue seedlings. Now I'm throwing out all pot with seedlings if between them appear some hybrid. Still not solved problem with hybrid which I got labeled as "ochroleucus x kotschyanus" - in F-2 all look as kotschyanus, although must be some splitting. Really I can't separate this F-1 hybrid from pure kotschyanus, too. So now I put "?" mark at all those pots and most likely will plant them out in ornamental garden. Must to shorten a little my collection from similar rubbish.

[Janis Ruksans]

Some crocuses blooming now in my collection
Starts blooming Crocus boryi from Peloponess. Quite uniform species, although rarely can be found slightly striped individuals, not blooming yet.
Crocus brachyphylus was described by me earlier as C. speciosus subsp. elegans, but according rules of taxonomy must be used name applied at higher level. So C. brachyphylus is the official name, although "elegans" is more characterising this excellent beauty from Turkey, something N from Akseki. Originally it was found by Osman Erol (although some samples in Gothenburgs BG collection looks something similar) but Osman later resigned to regard it as new species. Ingo Schneider returned there later in spring and found that this species has only 2 leaves in general, so adding good feature to separate it from other "speciosus"crocuses. It really is very elegant and graceful crocus with its purest white, even glistening throat and flower tube.
 Labeled as cancellatus this Crocus from Samos Island grows in area regarded as C. mazziaricus localities, but certainly great research must be done as there are hidden several species.
White form of Crocus kotschyanus is exceptionally beautiful but all seedlings of it comes out invariably blue, no one white between them as I observed in case of white banaticus.
And as last in this entry - first flower of Crocus melantherus from Pellopones in Greece.

    Crocus boryi PELOG-010 -01
    Crocus brachyphylus
    Crocus cancellatus KJGR-084 -03
    Crocus kotschyanus albus
    Crocus melantherus 12GRA-004 -04

[ruben]

Nice picture of stunning plants Janis!

Here in flower today:

Crocus hadriaticus - i love the very good parfum of it
Crocus hadriaticus HVB 1115 - collection from stemnitsa Greece
Crocus niveus HVB collection
Crocus tournefortii white form
Crocus ilgazensis x pulchellus 'Fantasy' - it has got a very long blooming period here 

[ruben]

Crocus speciosus 'Artabir'
Crocus speciosus seedling

[ruben]

The cold frame where i grow my most special crocus with the ennoying oxalis :-(

[Maggi Young]

At the end of the world, Ruben, I think that there will be cockroaches - and those  oxalis!

[Janis Ruksans]

It is quite strange season for crocus blooming. A lot of crocuses has incompletely developed anthers (white and without pollens) and proportions  (position) of stigma and anthers not  the same as usually and as must to be. Crocus lycius which usually has bright red stigma hidden between anthers or only slightly overtops them this year in most cases has yellow stigmas well overtopping anthers. The same I observed in many individuals of C. xantholaimos, bolensis etc. I suppose that reason is very long and cold summer. Here in Latvia weather changed to something summer-like only in July. It is the time when flower parts develops in corm and for that is needed certain temperature limits.
But now some pictures from last day (New ones still not sorted out and named). As the first is Crocus nudiflorus collected for me by my great friend Brian Duncan in Spain
Next is Crocus pulchellus from Chios Island. I searched there for Crocus biflorus although it is not recorded from Chios, but some years ago in Gothenburg was grown one sample from this Island but was lost before I saw it. All collected corms with annulate tunics turned C. pulchellus.
Then two pictures of Crocus vallicola - the first from Turkey, the second from Russian Caucasus (N faced slopes in W part of ridge). The Russian are not so good growers as Turkish, but with more prominent "tail" on top of flower segments. And as last is C. xantholaimos.

[krisderaeymaeker]

Crocus archibaldiorum

[Boyed]

Crocus speciosus 'Artabir'
Crocus speciosus seedling

Ruben,

Where your 'Artabir' comes from? I have 2 'Artabirs' one stock is from Augis, another is from Janis. Augis' 'Artabir' is a plant of regular size, but with more prominant veins. 'Artabir' from Janis blooms earlier, larger plant, less veined and has outer petals milcky white from outside at the beginning of blooming. It less corresponds to the official description. I think that the stock from Augis more suitable for 'Artabir'. Anyway, this tipic is quite complicating, as according to Janis, there are several crocuses curcling in the trade under this name. Here is my 'Artabir' from Janis, it's just started blooming.



Augis' stock does not show noses yet, but you can see how it looks in my last year's posts whre I show my crocus speciosus varieties

http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=12329.120