Crocus in the garden April 2010

[HClase]

Here in St John's the weather has taken a sudden turn for the better, the snow has mostly gone from the garden, although there's still plenty in the woods; the temperature today (Good Friday) was up to 16 C and it was fairly sunny.  (Cf yesterday 3 C with drizzle and fog.)  More to the point there were suddenly a lot of croci with wide open flowers - nothing to excite the experts, but I was pleased to see that a couple of selected self-seedlings (female parent 'Princess Beatrix') are slowly increasing.  Thomas tells me they are not like any named cultivar he knows of and don't seem to match any in his compilation, so I have named them after my granddaughters.  Any tips for getting them to increase faster, apart from fertilizing them a bit and growing in good soil?

[Janis Ruksans]

A pair of days we had sun here and I made some picrures of crocuses in open garden.
As the first is one of my C. chrysanthus group sedlings - still unnamed.
Follows two selections from Crocus korolkowii - LUCKY NUMBER and YELLOW TIGER
Crocus malyi usually blooms much later, but long winter broke its nature...
From my hybrids between Crocus reticulatus and angustifolius Lithuanian nurseryman Leonid Bondarenko selected several nice vultivars. Here pictures of two of them - EGO and JANIS RUKSANS. In my coming book I'm naming this hybrid group as Crocus x leonidii.
And as last - Crocus vernus CROATIA
Janis

[Lesley Cox]

It seems a very long season for spring crocus in the north this year, perhaps because the horrid winter has held things up for many gardeners.

I do like the above colour combinations, especially that of 'Imogen.'

[Janis Ruksans]

HAPPY EASTHER to all Crocophiles and others!
Janis

[Guff]

Picture 1-3 Vernus Albiflorus . Seems I have 4 corms that got mixed in with the Yalta. I will put a string or rubber band around the leaves, then when they start to yellow I will dig them.
Picture 4 bought as Haarlem Gem.
Picture 5 Twilight. I'm still not convinced this is Negro boy
Picture 6 Prince Claus

[Armin]

Happy Easter!

Howard,
nice crosses - congratulations. Every croconut would be glad to see them flowering in the own garden

Guff,
the C. albiflorus seem to like your growing conditions.

I've not recognised dark tips on 'Negro Boy' in early flowering stage but do not exclude such as colors change over flowering period. Dark tips sometimes appear in digital photos even contrast is soft for the human eye - a problem of color reproduction of DSCs...
Is your 'Twilight' already a cross with one of your vernus ssp. with dark tips?

[Guff]

Armin are you asking if I crossed Twilight to the Vernus Albiflorus? I did pab pollen, but I never have had any seeds from the Albiflorus, and I have tried different pollen, even it's own. It's a tiny flower, too bad who knows what the seedlings would be like.

Picturatus

[Ragged Robin]

Lovely Guff and a great photo - is your C Picturatus one of several?

[Janis Ruksans]

Nice day today and a lot of bees zumming over Crocuses. Few pictures for today:
Crocus albiflorus form from Bavarian Alps
Two pictures of Crocus atticus cv. Michael Hoog's Memory
White form of C. heuffelianus from Lizja pass - there were only such white and deep purple 50/50
Crocus scepusiensis leucostigma has white stigma
Crocus tommasinianus x Yalta

[Ragged Robin]

Janis, can you tell me about this one Crocus tommasinianus x Yalta?

[daveyp1970]

Janis your Crocus albiflorus form from Bavarian Alps is an absolute must have plant stunning,am i right in saying albiflorus are trickier than straight vernus to grow or is that wrong.

[HClase]

Lesley,

It's not that it's a long season, just that here at any rate it starts so much later, and it sounds as though Janis' season is similar.  There are also masses of snowdrops in full flower at present, and since it has got colder again they should last.  Actually it's early for us this year, I sometimes don't see my first crocus until the end of April (or anything else when the snow lasts that long).  I seem to remember posting a crocus in June one year!

My crosses are just haphazard - there's one new one in the Princess B bed this year, but not worth saving.  No-one has offered any suggestions about speeding up the increase of my selections, maybe there isn't any method other than good growing conditions?

[Armin]

Armin are you asking if I crossed Twilight to the Vernus Albiflorus? I did pab pollen, but I never have had any seeds from the Albiflorus, and I have tried different pollen, even it's own. It's a tiny flower, too bad who knows what the seedlings would be like.

Picturatus

Guff,
with reference to the dark tipped 'Twilight' I thought about the possibility that iti is a cross with a dark tipped vernus ssp. vernus (heuffelianus, scepusiensis) but not particular albiflorus. I don't know if C. vernus ssp. albiflorus does cross with C. vernus dutch hybrids due different chromosome numbers - according to phylogenetic albiflorus is closer related to C. etruscus then vernus ssp. vernus. I also never got seeds from my albiflorus...

[Janis Ruksans]

Lesley,

It's not that it's a long season, just that here at any rate it starts so much later, and it sounds as though Janis' season is similar.  There are also masses of snowdrops in full flower at present, and since it has got colder again they should last.  Actually it's early for us this year, I sometimes don't see my first crocus until the end of April (or anything else when the snow lasts that long).  I seem to remember posting a crocus in June one year!

My crosses are just haphazard - there's one new one in the Princess B bed this year, but not worth saving.  No-one has offered any suggestions about speeding up the increase of my selections, maybe there isn't any method other than good growing conditions?

We have very similar conditions. I had Crocuses in flower at end of May and even in June, although normally they must to end with first days of May or very end of Aprill.
Janis

[Janis Ruksans]

Janis, can you tell me about this one Crocus tommasinianus x Yalta?

Crocus tommasinianus YALTA was selected by me. When I worked on my monograph about crocuses in eighties of last century I got seeds of C. tommasinianus from Nikitskyi Botanical Gardens in Yalta (Crimea, now Ukraina). Between those seedlings flowered one plant clearly showing hybridising with some large Dutch crocus vernus cultivar (may be VANGUARD as the color is of same type only contrast in color between outer and inner flower segments iws much more expressed). I marked it and later named by the locality from where came original seeds. It was not a very good name because it was just in Yalta where Josef Stalin forced Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt to sign a treaty that allowed Russia to occupy the Baltic States after the end of the World War II. Now it is too late to change the name as the variety has become well known and now is widely grown in Holland and offered in many catalogues all over the world.  Around 1995 I gave a pair handfuls of corms to my Dutch friend, nurseryman Jan Pennings and from his nursery it found the way to wide market.
Janis