Crocus - July 2017

[Janis Ruksans]

Crocus repotting now goes in full speed. Pots are harvested, corms cleaned and planted in new, fresh substrate. I can't name it as soil, because I'm always replanting in new sterile medium made from 1 part of coarse sand, 2 parts of sand and 1 part of peat moss + dolomite chalk up to pH 6.5 and + complete slow releasing granulate fertilizer - NPK - 11-11-18 + microelements. In garden are Peony blooming. Last Sunday we had more than 1000 visitors. Horrible...
I'm repotting... On right - new plantings top dressed with stone chips, (in background seedling pots), on left newly placed pots. Far behind building of new raised beds.
New pots with replanted corms on raised bed
My trolly for mowing pots - for repotting and for placing back on raised bed.

[Janis Ruksans]

This season was very strange. Some species grew very well, some just opposite. Crocus speciosus group usually are forming larger corms, pulchellus smaller. This year just opposite - all crocuses from speciosus group formed small corms but pulchellus unusually large.
On the first picture pots prepared for replanting.
Crocus thirkeanus (herbertii) corms were small, but gargaricus sometimes unusually large. Here on attached picture you can compare size of corms (gridlines 5 mm) from various stocks of gargaricus/thirkeanus  -
Ulu dag - type locality of Crocus thirkeanus, stoloniferous
Kaz dag - regarded as type locality of C. gargaricus - difficult to identify, corm tunics looks intermediate, but I'm not certain about origin of plants, they were not collected by myself but bought from Czech collector
Boz-dag - typical, stoloniferous thirkeanus
Goktepe - very typical, non stoloniferous gargaricus, this year occasionally formed unusually huge corms.
Another unusuality - Crocus gilanicus now had up to 10 mm long new shoots (at start of July!), Crocus vallicola - up to 5 mm long new shoots, but scharojanii still didn't start re-growing. Incredible.
Crocus veluchensis as always already formed new roots.

[Janis Ruksans]

Herr H. Kerndorff put under doubt identity of plant used for front cover of my crocus monograph. Really the all features, but colour completely match with description of Crocus mawii (are inside limits given in original paper). Of course, it is albino and could be hybrid with some of C. chrysanthus s.l. growing in vicinity. At harvesting time I checked corm tunic features. On attached picture is corm tunics of crocus grown by me as C. mawii (exact locality from where comes HKEP plant is unknown/unpublished), next are tunics of type gathering (HKEP) and the third is tunics from mine white flowering individual. There were only two whites in population observed by me.

[Steve Garvie]

Crocus scharojanii -Flowering earlier than I expected. I have corms from other sources which have just gone dormant.

[Lesley Cox]

Stunning photos Steve. I don't have this so hadn't realized how very like Crocus vallicola it is, except for the thrilling colour of course. But the shape is almost identical. A gorgeous plant.

Maggi would it be possible to adjust the name of this thread, to include the word Crocus? July 2017 covers quite a bit more than just crocuses, even for those who are truly croconut cases. Perhaps Autumn-flowering Crocuses, July 2017? since spring will be arriving here in the south soon  and I'm sure we'll have pictures to show.

[Maggi Young]

changing the name of the thread

[Janis Ruksans]

I took short pause in repotting of crocuses. Last week I finished despatching of orders and now all my powers are decided for building up new raised beds. Here you can see this in process - new basements and next week 2 new raised beds will be added to another new one which now are almost half full with Anemones (nemorosa and ranunculoides), next week will be added Erythroniums, snowdrops and fritillarias, but then again back to crocuses. The first will be suworovianus which already has up to 5 cm long shoots.
But almost every second day the normal routine are interrupted by visitors. Today we already had a group of 24 persons (on attached picture my wife Guna (on left side) are telling about history of our garden), but later today will come another group of 50 persons. Last Wednesday we had 20 guests from Germany and each got as present small packet with corms of Crocus korolkowii - and so it goes from early spring till late autumn when frost kills leaves of perennials.
Next spring I'm planing Open Door Day dedicated for crocuses - it will be in mid March, so greenhouse must be ready to accept hundreds of visitors (during Paeonia Day we had more than 1000 visitors in the first day and more than 600 on the second day).

[Tony Willis]

Janis

it is good that so many people are interested in seeing your nursery and hearing about your plants. Passing on your experience is invaluable

Perhaps not so interesting but showing the contrast in growth between this and drier growing species,here is Crocus pelistericus today still in full leaf and showing no signs of dying down. This and C.scardicus are still growing .

[Steve Garvie]

At what time of year do you recommend re-potting these Tony? My plants are also still in full leaf.

[Tony Willis]

Steve an interesting question,I was discussing this with a very experienced grower a couple of days ago and he said early August.  His reasoning was that although still in growth the new shoots for next year were already developing and they are very fragile. If you leave it any later then there is a danger they will be damaged as they break off very easily.

I have to confess I never repot mine and the only time they are disturbed is when I take some off to give away. Some pots have stood untouched apart from weeding for over ten years and flower well.  A bit crowded I accept. I do however repot all my other crocuses about now every year

[Janis Ruksans]

Mine were still green too and already formed new roots few weeks ago when I repotted them. I keep them quite dry now, as I observed in nature the soil where C. scardicus grow in summer is dry. But I think that very important is adding of additional peat moss to usual substrate mix to make it more acid.

[Steve Garvie]

Many thanks Tony and Janis!

[Janis Ruksans]

Just few days ago a new crocus species was published by famous Turkish researcher SIRRI YÜZBAŞIOĞLU. By colour and corm tunics it resembles C. chrysanthus, but leaves has up to 7 ribs in each lateral channel. By that it is closer to mine Crocus sozenii from same region but C. sozenii has blue flowers. Attached pictures are from Phytotaxa 314 (1): 110–116  (https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.314.1.10) where the new crocus was published. It is very good species, very well separable from other similar. In nature it blooms together with Galanthus gracilis and at present is known only from locus classicus, but could be distributed wider. There must to come several another new species from chrysanthus "group".

[Maggi Young]

Just few days ago a new crocus species was published by famous Turkish researcher SIRRI YÜZBAŞIOĞLU. By colour and corm tunics it resembles C. chrysanthus, but leaves has up to 7 ribs in each lateral channel. By that it is closer to mine Crocus sozenii from same region but C. sozenii has blue flowers. Attached pictures are from Phytotaxa 314 (1): 110–116  (https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.314.1.10) where the new crocus was published. It is very good species, very well separable from other similar. In nature it blooms together with Galanthus gracilis and at present is known only from locus classicus, but could be distributed wider. There must to come several another new species from chrysanthus "group".

The link given by Janis  leads to a paywall. You may wish to pay to download the paper for Crocus tuna-ekemii here   :
https://www.biotaxa.org/Phytotaxa/article/view/phytotaxa.314.1.10

Abstract

"Crocus tuna-ekimii is described as a new species from Balıkesir province in western Anatolia. The new species belongs to C. sect. Nudiscapus ser. Biflori, based on morphological features. It resembles the recently described C. sozenii, but clearly differs from it in flower color, morphology and chromosome number. A full description, detailed illustrations, photographs of metaphase, and SEM micrographs of seed-surface sculpturing pattern are presented. IUCN threat category and observations on the population are presented."

 Thank you for sharing this information about this newly described species, Janis!
 So much happening with the number of researchers interested in this genus.

[Maggi Young]

Tribute  by Jennifer Stackhouse to Marcus Harvey and the Crocus named for him by Janis  ..... Crocus harveyi  ....
http://gardendrum.com/2017/07/01/crocus-tribute-plantsman-marcus-harvey/



Marcus Harvey on Chios - photo by his partner,  Susan Jarick

This crocus name was published in  IRG 90  - International Rock Gardener - http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/logdir/2017Jun211498039508IRG_90_June.pdf