Crocus December-2017

[udo]

The best gift to christmas, first flowers from own cross: Crocus chrysanthus x melantherus

[Janis Ruksans]

The best gift to christmas, first flowers from own cross: Crocus chrysanthus x melantherus

Parent plants bloomed in same time or you kept pollens of melantherus for pollinationg of chrysanthus s.l. ?

[udo]

Pot from Crocus chrysanthus on a window in my house, pollinated with the last flower from C.melantherus in January 2014.

[Yann]

Nice gift this morning, Crocus caricus in all its glory.

[Janis Ruksans]

Nice gift this morning, Crocus caricus in all its glory.

Super! With me only related C. fauseri developed some leaves, but no flowers at moment.

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Nice gift this morning, Crocus caricus in all its glory.

Glory is the word !  It looks truly glorious Yann !  Excellent photography too, worthy of Christmas eve ! 

[udo]

Crocus chrysanthus x melantherus open yesterday.

[Margaret Thorne]

This Crocus opened for the first time this morning. Can someone identify the species for me please?

[WimB]

Two in silver and one in gold

Crocus babadagensis
Crocus korolkowii
and Crocus michelsonii

[Janis Ruksans]

We have incredibly warm and wet December. Still no real frost this autumn came. I'm not counting few nights when night temperature dropped in greenhouse to minus 3 C. There are almost no sunny days, only few some hours long break in clouds when sun can enter, but not sufficient for opening of still tight buds of those spring crocuses which hurried to come out, but for some autumn bloomers it was sufficient.
The most proliferous blooming continues on Crocus melantherus and C. laevigatus.
Crocus cambessedesii came out late and I think it is the first time when its flowers started to open.
Still only partly open remains Crocus aleppicus
And blooms some of Crocus pumilus stocks from Crete - here picture of plant got from Jim Archibald.

[Janis Ruksans]

Of course there are several others autumn blooming crocuses as caspius, niveus etc. where remains some flowers, but there are only few of them, so I didn't pictured those.
From spring bloomers in addition came out the first flowers of Crocus hittiticus. Although it happened around week ago, the was insufficient sun to open their buds.

[Janis Ruksans]

Although temperature was not very low, I a little experimented with different coverings against frost inside greenhouse. My traditional tool is glass-wool, but now I compared it with 2 layers of bubble plastic. and put below thermometer registering max and minimal temperatures. It turned that both materials protect against minimal frost almost identically. Problems came in daylight, when shined sun. Below transparent bubble film in sum temperature started to rise, whilst under glass-wool it remained constant. That is very important to protect plantings against too early coming out. So - I will remain with glass-wool as the best protector.
The global forecast for January at my place still is very warm, up to +3 C comparing with average, and there are only few days with frost not lower than minus five, but precipitation +20% of average - mostly rain and wet snow. Last night we had heavy snowing here, now again all is black and outside is +2 C. Garden beds are flooded...

[Luc Gilgemyn]

This Crocus imperati TCH2911 was grown from seed from the Crocus group - judging by its collection code one from Hubi and his son Chris ! 

[Luc Gilgemyn]

To end the year, Crocus michelsonii from all angles.

[Maggi Young]

Beautiful, beautiful crocus!  Such elegance, such variety, such delicacy - who could resist these  gems?