Crocus, May 2018

[Jupiter]

I am excited tempered with a touch of sadness to have Crocus cartwrightianus flowering; from the last Hillview rare plants sale. Marcus Harvey has left us but will not be forgotten, with beauties like this for his legacy.

[Maggi Young]

As one might expect from Marcus - that's rather a fine form!

[Steve Garvie]

A most beautiful Crocus!

[Jupiter]

Yes I agree Steve, I'm thrilled to have it. Only moabiticus is more desirable in my opinion, so I'll have to work on sourcing some seed of that one.

Also flowering in my garden now is Crocus medius (syn. C. ligusticus?), from Otto.

[fermi de Sousa]

... from the last Hillview rare plants sale. Marcus Harvey has left us but will not be forgotten,

Unfortunately with Marcus not there to supervise a few mistakes crept in
This was supposed to be the spring flowering C. x jessopiae
cheers
fermi

[Jupiter]

Yes, Otto told me that Marcus held a lot of the knowledge in his head, not always relying on labels. What do you think your Crocus might be Fermi? Any clues?

I have a couple of nice darker variants in my patch of C. laevigatus.

[Otto Fauser]

Good morning Fermi , the C xjessopiae from Marcus  is C. longiflorus . I had the same misnomer  plus another  wrongly labelled species and expect more as the winter flowering species  start to bloom . Like Jamus ,I too have a dark C. laevigatus in large clumps as it multiplies rapidly . It came to me as John Grimshaw's  dark laevigatus  .

[Lesley Cox]

I don't think I ever had anything wrongly named from Marcus himself but from the final seedlist before his death, I think others than himself at last did the packing and labelling of packets as I had two different writings on the packets and neither was Marcus's own writing. I bought a number of cyclamen seeds (only one has co far germinated though because 1 has, I'm hopeful the others may yet do so. The one was supposed to be hederifolium with long, narrow, arrow-shaped foliage but of the 12 seedlings uo, all seem to be various leaf forms of coum, including one which is wholly silver but the others are fairy ordinarily marbelled forms.

[fermi de Sousa]

... the C xjessopiae from Marcus  is C. longiflorus . I had the same misnomer  plus another  wrongly labelled species and expect more as the winter flowering species  start to bloom ....

Thanks, Otto!
Pity I also ordered C. longiflorus and that has flowered as well so I know that one is correct
Here is one that is a bit of a mystery.
I noticed the flowers but had no recollection of planting crocus in this area - so they couldn't been put here over a dozen years ago!
cheers
fermi

[fermi de Sousa]

Otto tells me that my mystery purple crocus is most likely Crocus medius
But most of the commercial stocks of it are virused
Still haven't worked out how they got to this site on the east side of the house. We did have a bulb bed in this area on the other side of the path.

On the other side of the house there are a couple of crocus putting up a bloom or two:
1 & 2) Crocus ochroleucus - i think from seedex seed a while ago -from Marcus Harvey in 2003
3 & 4) Crocus goulimyi 'Mani White' - from Palmiro & Verity at our plant swap last month - originally from Marcus Harvey as well
cheers
fermi

[Lesley Cox]

I still have some Crocus medius, virused, from Marcus after quite a few years. He reckoned the virus didn't affect their growth and wasn't of any real concern and continued to supply it. However, some years ago Thomas Huber sent me some wild collected seed of medius and the flowers on the seedlings are of a clear, unblemished smoothness and entirely preferable to the virused stock. Unfortunately, as yet they haven't had seed themselves.

[Janis Ruksans]

I still have some Crocus medius, virused, from Marcus after quite a few years. He reckoned the virus didn't affect their growth and wasn't of any real concern and continued to supply it. However, some years ago Thomas Huber sent me some wild collected seed of medius and the flowers on the seedlings are of a clear, unblemished smoothness and entirely preferable to the virused stock. Unfortunately, as yet they haven't had seed themselves.

Crocus ligusticus (correct name for medius) - almost all commercial stocks are virus infected. I can recommend to destroy them. If this species can live with virus it is source of infection for other stocks. Usually they are sterile. Try pollinate your healthy plants, and you will receive seeds. Healthy ligusticus is larger, more prolific bloomer and in all aspects exceeds those commercial infected stocks.

[Jupiter]

The second bulb (I have only two) of C. cartwrightinaus has flowered! I managed a picture before work. It's officially my favourite now.

[Yann]

great colors Jamus

[Janis Ruksans]

The first 800 pots with crocuses are repotted and placed. Still around 3500 left... Crop quite good. Some (danfordiae group) are small, but at present lost only one stock - wattiorum from HKEP, but in the same time wattiorum from PPW - grew perfectly. So I still have this species.
Just prepared packet with seeds for Wim (Crocus group seed exchange).