Crocus December-2017

[Janis Ruksans]

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

With me at present only leaves... but may be it is good, as winter certainly will come sometimes.

[Yann]

some stunning crocuses shown here, nothing in bloom yet here.

[Diane Whitehead]

This Crocus opened for the first time this morning.

Lovely pictures, Margaret.  No one has identified it yet, though.

Diane

[Margaret Thorne]

Lovely pictures, Margaret.  No one has identified it yet, though.

Diane

No, I’m really disappointed. I thought it would be quite straightforward for the experts who grow lots of different Crocus species (I don’t). Perhaps I’ll have to give some clues about where it came from.

[Janis Ruksans]

No, I’m really disappointed. I thought it would be quite straightforward for the experts who grow lots of different Crocus species (I don’t). Perhaps I’ll have to give some clues about where it came from.

Pictures really are excellent, but there are only few crocus species which you can identify without doubt, seeing only picture of flower. Very important are corm tunics. Of course, origin (from where it come from) could be very helpful. I have some ideas, but outside colour confuses me and throat colour, may be, too.

[Margaret Thorne]

Pictures really are excellent, but there are only few crocus species which you can identify without doubt, seeing only picture of flower. Very important are corm tunics. Of course, origin (from where it come from) could be very helpful. I have some ideas, but outside colour confuses me and throat colour, may be, too.

Thank you, Janis, I'll try to remember to photograph the corm when I repot it. I think it’s a common crocus but with a strange colour outside and no yellow in the throat.
In April 2014, David and I flew to Kefalonia, one of the Ionian Islands off the west coast of the Peloponnese. The island’s highest peak Megálos Sorós which is 1,628m rises straight from the sea and is part of the Mt. Énos National Park. We climbed to the top on 12th April and saw a lot of good snowmelt plants though no Crocuses, but there was an interpretative sign which showed a photograph of ‘Crocus sieberi ssp.  sublimis’ with a completely white throat. We wondered if the colour on the sign had faded, but lower down the mountain (at 1,340m), in a shady picnic area, we came across one last remaining battered crocus which did indeed have a pure white throat. Several days later while photographing orchids elsewhere on the island, we came across some crocus seed, a little of which we brought home and grew. We thought it was probably an autumn flowering species as it was at a lower altitude and the seed was already ripe, but I think the only autumn flowering crocus on the island is C. hadriaticus and the pictures I posted aren’t that.
So, I think it must be Crocus sublimis which, as Janis says in his book, can have a throat completely devoid of the yellow pigmentation. There is no C. veluchensis on the island, so no possibility of hybridisation with that. But the colouration on the outside of the outer tepals seems very strange and wasn't present on the only one we saw in flower on the island. Perhaps Kefalonia is full of crocus in flower at the moment!

[Margaret Thorne]

Thank you, Janis, I'll try to remember to photograph the corm when I repot it.

Just discovered I photographed it this year.

[Janis Ruksans]

Without great doubt it is sublimis. My opinion was that it is crocus from atticus-sublimis-nivalis-athous group, just for the very characteristic flower's shape, but I was not sure about this. Of course it was too little information to decide just which one species.
The throat colour in this group is very variable. I'm attaching here C. sublimis picture from Mt. Parnasos. You can see white throat. When I saw blooming plants of C. athous on Mt. Athos, they were with white throat, but I collected few out of flowers, too and they had well expressed yellow tone in throat when bloomed in my collection.
Checking my papers, I found that on Kephalonia from this group grows just sublimis, so you can without doubt to name it sublimis.

Few pictures of flower buds today.
The first is recently published C. randjeloviciorum. It was described from Serbia, but this plant comes from adjacent Bulgaria, most likely the same, growing on same mountain system and not far from locus classicus.
The next is still unidentified species from "biflorus" complex, originally collected not far from Seydishekir in direction to Akseki in Turkey.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE AND MANY NICE ENTRIES IN 2018!
Sincerely Yours
Janis