Colchicums late 2008

[Anthony Darby]

Gosh, some lovely colchicums. Here are some more of mine flowering at the weekend. One labelled 'cupanii', but unlike Rafa's and my other two, the leaves are narrow and applanate. The other two are labelled as Colchicum pusilum Crete, but don't look the same to me.

[Hagen Engelmann]

Oh yes Anthony, that is the witch`s spell of the genus colchicum. You have different plants with the same name and I have same plants with different names.

[David Shaw]

Whilst were away the Colchicum cupanii were busy doing their thing.

[Anthony Darby]

That's a nice potfull David. I'm trying to find out the difference between pusillum and cretense. The only thing I can find is cretense has brown anthers, as opposed to yellow, and flowers before the leaves in Crete [- this may not be the case in the alpine house?]. Both seem to have tepals up to 2cm long. I have a pot labelled cretense, but nothing so far this year. I suspect my first pic above is not cupanii but not knowing from whence it came makes it difficult to identify.

[Hagen Engelmann]

Hi Zhirair, I have made a pic from the only bulb of Colchicum speciosum Atrorubens, I have. I hope it is correct. The color is much better then the pic, it`s a lot more purplered. I had the corm several years but it is not a good splitter.
An equal good cultivar is ROSY DAWN, you can find it out in every collection.

[mark smyth]

Anthony, David's potful is the same as my cupanii flowering with well advanced supervolute leaves

[olegKon]

Luckily the weather is dry and sunny.
Colhicum agrippinum

Colhicum autumnale
Colchicum Water Lily
Colchicum Glory of Hempsted (is it?)
Colhicum tenorii

[Boyed]

Hagen,

It's true. Colchicum speciosum Atrorunens is quite bad increaser. Bisides, I noticed, that it blooms quite later than the other speciosum variations. I got a single bulb of it from a colleague from Moscow 3 years ago and still have only one bulb. I still wait  to see when it'll decide to produe a generation.

In my garden doesn't show as dark stems as in the garden of my colleague and which is a pazzle for me. Maybe the reason is semi-shade.

I post a its picture from my Moscow colleague.
I very much like the way it looks.
The variety 'Rosy Dawn' came into my collection only this year and I've been waiting for it's blooming. Additinally, I can recommend the variety 'Pink Goblet', which has very nice rounded goblets, resembling in shape col chicum specious Album.

Ole,

Wonderful photos, especially the pics of c. autumnale and tenor ii! Col chicum tenor ii looks wonderful and impressive.

[Armin]

Dominique,
I'm overwhelmed with joy by your colchicum flower show
Your garden pictures are contagious. It seems I get another infection

To all others,
thank you for showing all such colchicum beauties

[Boyed]

By the way, what I wanted to ask.
In a Russian on-line horticultural encyclopedia it is mentioned that there are 2 dark blooming variations of colchicum speciosum - one is colchicum speciosum rubrum, the other is colchicum speciosum Atrorunens. It is said that colchicum speciosum rubrum is slightly paler than Atrorubens. Anyway, the variation rubrum sounds unfamiliar to me and I can't find any information about it in Western literature. I'd like to know if anybody of you heard about it.

[Tony Willis]

Boyed

I have just been given one called C. speciosum Beckets' Darkest, to be a little sarcastic, presumably the darkest in his garden at that moment.So if this is not mentioned it makes three!!

here are two C bivonae the first of which is flowering for the first time and I am very pleased with it  and a species from Nur Dag in Turkey

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Great pix Tony !
The species from Turkey is a real gem !!

[Hagen Engelmann]

Hi Zhirair,

Patrick M Synge COLLINS GIDE TO BULBS (London 1961) describes the cultivar ATRORUBENS and refers a species too, called Colchicum rubrum.
Rod Leeds AUTUMN BULBS (2005) also describes both, ATRORUBENS and RUBRUM.

Between ATRORUBENS an ATROPURPUREUM there are a mass of misunderstandings.
I got all my ATRORUBENS as ATROPURPUREUM.

[dominique]

Thank you Armin. I will be able to swap with you a lot of varieties next year if you want be ill with rosy desease !!! for all asked me what i make with the leaves : In spring, there is daffodils, tulips and Allium  in the areas beetween the Colchicum.Leaves are large but not bad, only 2  weeks in june yellow before dry. The ground is grey in summer but in august it is the explosion married with Dahlia and Aster. It is a choice. We cannot have such flowers without the leaves after.
Colchicum autumnale atropurpureum is a little very dark form of autumnale but atrorubens is a speciosum. I have speciosum Dick Trotter and speciosum Maximum very dark too

[Jim McKenney]

Hi Zhirair,

Patrick M Synge COLLINS GIDE TO BULBS (London 1961) describes the cultivar ATRORUBENS and refers a species too, called Colchicum rubrum.
Rod Leeds AUTUMN BULBS (2005) also describes both, ATRORUBENS and RUBRUM.

Between ATRORUBENS an ATROPURPUREUM there are a mass of misunderstandings.
I got all my ATRORUBENS as ATROPURPUREUM.

Hagen, take another look at Synge. There is a comma after the word sp. : "  'Atrorubens'...a very fine variety of the sp., rubrum is very close to this..."

I think what he was saying amounts to this: "  'Atrorubens'... a very fine variety of the species speciosum, [the variety, garden form, hybrid] rubrum is very close to this..."

Notice that Synge had the word rubrum printed in italics (durch schrägen Druck ). This is typical of practice at that time; note that he also used it for album as in Colchicum speciosum album. But the white flowered Colchicum speciosum is a clone, isn't it? And in any case there is no naturally existing population of white flowered Colchicum speciosum that I'm aware of. In a modern text the names would be written Colchicum speciosum 'Album' and Colchicum speciosum 'Rubrum' (at least by those who regard 'Rubrum' as a form of C. speciosum).