Colchicums late 2008

[David Nicholson]

Gorgeous little things Tony.

[Hagen Engelmann]

Who can help? I got Colchicum OKTOBERFEST today. It`s a german name, but I can`t find no german website with it. It`s only listed by RHS.
Who likes to swap Colchicum-hybrids?

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Hagen,
Are you sure 'Oktoberfest' is a bulb... 

[Hagen Engelmann]

Oh yes Luc. I had two bulbs in my hands. "Oktoberfest" is not only a bavarian trallalla in munich.

[dominique]

Hi Hagen
I am interested to swap Hybriden Colchicum. I have already many of them
Dominique

[Hagen Engelmann]

Hi Dominique, I will send you a little list of my Cultivars but also of my wishes. Hope we will find something to swap. Please look to www.engelmannii.de. There you can see the most of my colchicums (but not all).
HUXLEY (with butterfly) came last year to me. First season in my garden and blooms in the first flower-period. (Is this the right name for the first group of flowering???)

[Maggi Young]

and blooms in the first flower-period. (Is this the right name for the first group of flowering???) 

Hagen, in english we would say the plant " had its first flowering" or "this is the first flowering of this plant"   

[Jim McKenney]

and blooms in the first flower-period. (Is this the right name for the first group of flowering???) 

Hagen, in english we would say the plant " had its first flowering" or "this is the first flowering of this plant"   

I wondered if perhaps Hagen has a listing of colchicums which breaks them into groups on the basis of flowering period (early, mid-season, late or something like that). Since so many of the hybrids look alike, flowering period can help in identification.

Bowles, in his account of hybrid colchicums, treats them in this way.

[Maggi Young]

AHA! Jim, you are most probably correct... I may have grasped the wrong end of this particular stick.... how does Bowles describe these periods? As Hagen suggests? ( no time to look right now!!)

[Jim McKenney]

In the chapter "Garden-Raised Hybrids" of his A Handbook of Crocus and Colchicum for Gardeners, Bowles, after a brief introduction, says "As they have grown in my garden they may be arranged in groups according to colour markings and period of flowering. "

He discusses the richly tessellated forms first, taking them in order of bloom. He does not name groups based on bloom period, but he does group them into a first group to bloom (early August: the cultivars he knew under the names 'Princess Astrid', 'Autumn Queen' and 'Rubens'), a later group of mid-September ('Disraeli', 'Glory of Heemstede', 'Violet Queen') and a "latest to flower group ('Danton', 'Conquest') lasting to the end of September.

He then goes on to discuss the hybrids which are not tessellated, and he groups these according to their appearance (in the sense of what they look like, not appearance in the sense of time of bloom): in this group he does not state bloom times.

Bowles treats 'Huxley' as a variety of Colchicum speciosum. This species and its garden forms are in a different chapter which does not group plants by bloom time, but he does give Colchicum speciosum to early October.

[Maggi Young]

Jim, many thanks for this info....

[David Shaw]

Whilst we are are all excited to be back on-line I will try to slip these two pics of Merendera montana through on the Colchicum site.We got them at Discussion W/E a couple of years ago and they appeared to be flowering size corms then but it has taken them until this year to produce the goods. Well worth waiting for, though.

[Luc Gilgemyn]

They're real beauties David !
Patience well rewarded !!

[David Nicholson]

Lovely little things those David.

[Tony Willis]

David those are very nice,I have never seen them before. What strong colour