Crocus Poll - Your top 5

[Ian Y]

Here are some pictures of Crocus pelistericus seed pods showing how long the stem has grown, as described in previous posts, and this happens surprisingly quickly so you need to be watching for them or you can miss the seeds.

I have never had seeds on our Crocus scardicus but some years they cross with C. pelistericus resulting in the hybrid C. x "gotoburgensis".

[Anthony Darby]

Ian's list is a lovely selection too.

[mark smyth]

Ian when you are about to compost those ugly brown Crocus that everyone else lusts after put them in a box and I'll compost them for you 

[Anthony Darby]

They say 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. It's not true. It's in the eye of the bewanter.! Ian beholding these plants and we bewanting them.

[Jim McKenney]

I bewanting them, too, Anthony.

Thanks everyone for giving me more crocuses to dream about.

My five favorite crocuses (drawn from among the approximately one hundred sorts I grow; ask me again tomorrow and the choice might be different):

lawn tommies: the typical Crocus tommasinianus with a pewter exterior and bright amethyst interior; if I could have only crocus for late winter, this would be it.

Crocus speciosus: not only because it's easy, readily available, reliable, big, showy, fragrant,  of beautiful color, but also because it blooms on my birthday.

The generally sterile plant in commerce under the name Crocus imperati; in our climate this is typically the earliest crocus of the new year in the garden; the contrast between the purple-black lines on the faded straw yellow of the exterior and the rich amethyst interior is a real treat for color-starved eyes in early winter. And this one is very fragrant, too.

Not a particular species, but the members of the saffron crocus group in general: the fragrances in this group are especially appealing. Crocus thomasii is particularly rich in this regard and C. oreocreticus has the typical saffron scent with an additional note of hyacinth. It's a keen pleasure to have a few in a cold frame so that when one lifts the light on a cold day one if greeted with that wonderful fragrance. I'm sure the saffron group crocuses I grow now will be much happier should a plant of Crocus mathewi appear to join them!

Dutch crocuses in general; although I've been accused of being a species snob simply because most of the plants I grow have botanical names, I'm nothing of the sort. What is going on with those people who dismiss these handsome plants as "blowzy" or "overblown" or with other pejorative comments? The intense dark purples are great, and a freshly opened bloom of one of the white-flowered cultivars is as beautiful as the bloom of Colchicum speciosum 'Album' to my eyes. 

[mark smyth]

I must be a snob!

[Maggi Young]

I must be a snob!

  Mark, dear, we all KNEW that!

[Jim McKenney]

Crocus "gotoborgensis" has been mentioned several times in this thread, and it prompts me to make two comments.

One comment concerns the name. To what exactly does this name refer? And can this name be accepted under the rules of nomenclature as a cultivar name or as some other sort of name? I think the rules are clear on the question of its use as a cultivar name: it is not admissible.

But can it be used as the name for all crocus hybrids of similar parentage? And if that usage is allowed, as gardeners we need to keep in mind that multiple clones will be making the rounds under that name.

I raise this issue because in the history of horticulture, there was a phase at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century when amateur hybridizers routinely gave their hybrids Latin-form names.  Although there is no second-guessing their intentions, in retrospect it often seems that they were using such names as what we would call cultivar names. However, some modern taxonomists use these names as group (lower case group) names for all hybrids of similar parentage.
One consequence of this is that if the first entity to be given this name was of a clonal nature, the identity of that original clone stands a chance of being lost when the same name is applied to other plants of similar parentage. 
Does anyone know how many different clones of crocus "gotoborgensis" exist? Is anyone keeping track of them? Has the original "gotoborgensis" been lost in the shuffle?


My second comment also touches on the way history is repeating itself with this crocus. Those of you familiar with the history of hybridization of lilies or irises probably see something familiar in crocus "gotoborgensis": that cloudy, even muddy color pattern is typical of the colors produced when one parent has predominately anthoxanthin pigments and the other parent has anthocyanin pigments. The old crocus hybrid 'Advance' shows the same effect, as do many early lily and bearded iris hybrids.

It will be nice to see a whole range of crocuses in these unusual colors: they make a handsome extension of the usual crocus colors.

[Tony Willis]

My understanding is that it was named by Gothenburg Botanic garden who first raised the cross between Crocus pelistericus and C. scardicus. I cannot comment on the rules of nomenclature as I know nothing about them. I think however it refers to all the clones and not a specific one Here are the parents.

[Maggi Young]

Jim, I think there has been lax use of this name "gotoborgensis" and variations thereof in these pages..... the proper spelling has been discussed elsewhere but I believe the accepted name  for bulbs of this cross is :
Crocus × gotoburgensis

[Maggi Young]

I think this naming is discussed in The Plantsman, Volume 1, part! March 2002, article  by Brian Mathew, page 44......

[Jim McKenney]

Thanks for the reference, Maggi. I went to the RHS site, found the table of contents for 2002, but Brian Mathew's article is evidently not on-line.

Can anyone point me to an on-line source?

And thanks, Maggi, for catching my spelling.

Sometimes I deliberately misspell things to provoke a response or comment, but this was not one of those times. However, in my five favorite crocuses post there is an example of that deliberate misspelling, and I'm still waiting to see if anyone notices and comments because it illustrates a spelling dilemma in nomenclature. 

[mark smyth]

I have the issue and will write it out now - Maggi is about to so I'll not bother

[Jim McKenney]

Thanks, Mark!

[Maggi Young]

The number of Plantsman articles available online is woefully restricted .... I searched quite extensively 

I haven't got the Plantsman article to hand, (though Mark has and can comment if there is something vital missed out from this short report, written by Brian and taken from his Bulb Newsletter of 2000).... click to expand the image.....