Crocus autumn - 2020

[Tristan_He]

Those are incredibly beautiful Poul. They seem to physically glow.

Does anyone know where I can get hold of scharojanii or any of its hybrids?

[pehe]

Thank you Tristan!

Most years (and also this year) Janis has C. scharojanii flavus in his catalogue: https://rarebulbs.lv/index.php/en/catal
The pure C. scharojanii is harder to get hold of and right now I am not aware of any source.

Poul

[Tristan_He]

Sadly not this year - no stock  !  Never mind, I will have to watch and wait.... I'm sure it will turn up.

[pehe]

My Crocus scharojanii flavus x scharojanii are still flowering.
Here with some new flowers.
Poul

[pehe]

Superb! Envy you!
Janis

Thanks you Janis,
I am really proud to be praised by you!
If I get seeds of these, I will spare some for you.

Poul

[Catwheazle]

Does it mean:
Crocus scharojanii var. flavus (like in the book of J. Ruksans)
or
Crocus scharojanii X flavus (like p.e. on the page of Michael Camphausen)

C. flavus flowers at March(April, so i think it would be var. flavus?

regards
Bernd

[pehe]

Crocus scharojanii var. flavus is a Natural hybrid between scharojanii and vallicola.
My plants are a hybrid between scharojanii var. flavus and scharojanii.
I do not think that Crocus flavus could hybridize with Crocus scharojanii.

Poul

[Tristan_He]

Since it is a hybrid and not a variety, C. scharojanii var. flavus presumably needs a new name anyway. One for the taxonomists....

[Catwheazle]

agree 

P.e. Paphiopedilum has an natural hybrid Paphiopedilum X AngThong = P. niveum x P. godefroyae

For this Cocus, i think: Crocus X Flavus

as Tristan_He said:  "One for the taxonomists...."

Bernd

[pehe]

agree 


For this Cocus, i think: Crocus X Flavus


Bernd

I think that would be a bad name. It is too close to the species Crocus flavus and I am sure it will make a lot of confusion.

Poul

[Janis Ruksans]

I think that would be a bad name. It is too close to the species Crocus flavus and I am sure it will make a lot of confusion.

Poul

I'm not professional taxonomist, but I think that name scharojanii var. flavus can be used, at least so it was published. Varietal level don't conflict with species name, so it is legal. WCSP list it as hybrid between vallicola and suworovianus, what certainly isn't true. I didn't saw original publication of this epithet, so I don't know how validly it is published.

[Janis Ruksans]

Yesterday I finished re-potting of crocuses. Last species were laevigatus, melantherus and boryi. Usually I was disappointed with boryi, but this year they produced excellent corms, larger than usually in this species. C. laevigatus - in opposite - made smaller corms than usually. This year it was easy to separate boryi from laevigatus by shape of corms - in boryi they were very round, but in laevigatus distinctly elongated. As usually in last years greatest losses were between species from pallasii group, but those which alive were of huge size. I already wrote that small replacement corms were formed by Central Asian species, although leaves were very large. Different species had different reaction on abnormal spring conditions. I suppose that starting of growing in the darkest days of year in December/January gave too little light for good corm crop to earliest species.
Serious enemy turned black ants. On pictures you can see same sample of Crocus cf. mazziaricus - on the first picture are corms harvested from pot which was invaded by ants, on the next the same acquisition number from pot without ants. Note 5 cm long shoots at repotting time on some corms.

[StevenS]

Poul, amazing pictures of your C. scharojanii crossings and thanks for sharing them.
I myself have (of course) been looking for a long time for the pure C. scharojanii but yet without any luck. I am even starting to wonder if there are any other plantsmen out there who have it all in there collection? (except for Janis I don't know of any other people).
I am even considering to go and visit it in it's original native habitat one day in order to get hold off some seed, would anybody know when would be the best bet to harvest the ripe seedpods for this species? My aim would be to re-introduce this species in as much private collections as possible in order to safeguard it from potential extinction due to habitat loss.

[Steve Garvie]

There are a few growers in Scotland with true scharojanii (image taken last month).

[Janis Ruksans]

Unfortunately I have only 1 poor corm of scharojanii. Covid broke all plans to visit Caucasus and collect some new stock and to check soil pH at their natural habitat.
As I wrote before, I was almost 3 weeks out of working capacity this summer. Waiting in lines in hospital for treatments, I had with old favourite, written more than 100 years ago - E. A. Bowles trilogy "My garden in ...".  "...in Spring" on page 89 he wrote that Crocus aerius below ground has "thin jacket instead of the hard shell-like covering of chrysanthus". And yes, most of chrysanthus sensu lato has hard corm tunics. One was separated by me many years ago by its very thin, papery tunics growing far to East in Turkey, and this summer I published it as new species naming after Doerte Harpke from Gaterslebren Institute of Plant Genetics as Crocus harpkeae.
At harvesting I'm always making notes about corm tunics, collect them in small envelopes for later more diligent exploring. Having quite many samples of so named chrysanthus from Greece, I was surprised by some variability between populations by features regarded by HKEP as important in taxonomy of annulate crocuses.
And here some observations about Greek "chrysanthus":
Sample from N of Drama - tunics thin, basal rings with pronged edge
from Keoax - tunic looks hard, basal rings distinctly toothed, but this is new acquisition and needs more checking.
Mount Kissavos and near Afyon - tunic hard, rings with very long tooth
Near Stavropoli - tunics thin, papyraceous, rings shortly pronged
Are they all the same species, only extremely variable, or similarly to so named "veluchensis" and some others represents several different taxa, can be solved only checking DNA what is not available for me at present.