Peloponnesos -september 2011

[Kees Jan]

Hi Thomas,

I think the picture you refer to must be Colchicum psaridis , an endemic species of the Mani Peninsula that is closely related to C. peloponesiacum and perhaps even closer related to C. cupanii from which it seems to be indistinghuisable unless you have a look at the corm (stoloniferous/ horizontal in psaridis). I found it just a few km from Areopolis, the name that is mentioned in your picture! It's a small world...

Colchicum peloponesiacum is, as far as I know, an endemic species of the northern Peloponnese, restricted to the Kalavrita area. Psaridis, cupanii and peloponesiacum all seem to have leaves that are quite well developed at flowering time.

KJ

[krisderaeymaeker]

Hi Kris, great photos of a great trip - even if Crocus was still rare  

Hi Thomas , thanks for the compliments.  
Maybe  (can't promise anything , its like in the movie : you have to watch until the end  )you have to be patient ?

[krisderaeymaeker]

Thank you for the super pictures it is good to see some flowers we have been in the midst of a storm with good snow cover the pictures remind me that spring might come soon more pictures please, cheers Ian the Christie kind.

Many thanks Ian !!! I promise ,there is more to come ....

[krisderaeymaeker]

Hi Thomas,
I think the picture you refer to must be Colchicum psaridis , an endemic species of the Mani Peninsula that is closely related to C. peloponesiacum and perhaps even closer related to C. cupanii from which it seems to be indistinghuisable unless you have a look at the corm (stoloniferous/ horizontal in psaridis). I found it just a few km from Areopolis, the name that is mentioned in your picture! It's a small world...
Colchicum peloponesiacum is, as far as I know, an endemic species of the northern Peloponnese, restricted to the Kalavrita area. Psaridis, cupanii and peloponesiacum all seem to have leaves that are quite well developed at flowering time.
KJ

I agree  Kees Jan.

[Thomas Huber]

Hi Thomas,

I think the picture you refer to must be Colchicum psaridis , an endemic species of the Mani Peninsula that is closely related to C. peloponesiacum and perhaps even closer related to C. cupanii from which it seems to be indistinghuisable unless you have a look at the corm (stoloniferous/ horizontal in psaridis). I found it just a few km from Areopolis, the name that is mentioned in your picture! It's a small world...

Colchicum peloponesiacum is, as far as I know, an endemic species of the northern Peloponnese, restricted to the Kalavrita area. Psaridis, cupanii and peloponesiacum all seem to have leaves that are quite well developed at flowering time.

KJ

Kees, I also read that C. peloponesiacum only should grow in Northern Peloponese and wondered about that. But I have checked the plants for Stolons and found only 'standard' corms forming one big clump while the others grew as single plants - so it wasn't C. psaridis, which is also smaller than the one on the photo (grow it since many years in my garden).

C. cupanii should have black anthers, which my plant obviously doesn't have, and the leaves are much broader and hairy. I don't know of any more Colchicums to conform with that key, so my thought was, that this should be C. peloponesiacum - perhaps this plant hasn't read the book about where it has to grow 


Kris, I will be patient, even if it is hard at this time of the year when hardly any crocus is out in my garden and each photo from the wild is welcome to brighten up our dull life. 

[Kees Jan]

It's always more complicated than you would think reading the books, isn't it typical .

I have seen hairy leaved plants that I thought were definitely psaridis, perhaps the corms are not always horizontal but only during some part of the growing season?! Or is it just boissieri that displays that kind of behaviour? The hairy leaves are interesting, if this is a consistent feature perhaps worth some taxonomic recognition? The anther colour in your plant is most interesting...! When I was in the Peloponnese with Marijn van den Brink we found hairy plants near Areopolis with a very different anther colour: http://photos.v-d-brink.eu/Flora-and-Fauna/Europe/Greece-Southern-Peloponnese/10896942_NFTzvV#760896904_CN9kv

There are pics of peloponesiacum in cultivation in a similar thread started by Kris at the VRV forum: http://www.vrvforum.be/forum/index.php?topic=587.30

[Thomas Huber]

Ohh yes - you're so right. Life would be much easier if we could only enjoy the plants' beauty without that bondage of having a name for them ....     Let's hope that there will be a monograph about Colchicum published soon.

Your photo of C. psaridis shows a real abnormal amount of hairs on its leaves - seems like hairness isn't a good feature for identifying a Colchicum. But the corms are the best feature for id - they always form stolons and look different from the 'standard' Colchicum corm. Compared with C. boissieri they look the same, but smaller and finer.

The photo of C. peloponesiacum in the VRV forum looks similar to my plant, except the brighter flower colour, won't you say?

[Kees Jan]

yes, they look similar, particularly the colour of the anthers, which I still think is probably variable from yellow to the colour in Marijn's pictures. It seems very unlikely to me that there are two colchicum species with hairy leaves growing around Areopolis, both closely related to C. cupanii! I suppose it MUST  be variation within a single species, I have never seen hairy leaves in colchicum species of the cupanii group in other locations than in the vicinity of Areopolis, Mani Peninsula!

Certainly a very interesting population.

[krisderaeymaeker]

Colchicum peloponnesiacum gets the attention it deserves , so time for the rest of the story.
We left the Chelmos area and went to Mount Kylini with the hope to find Crocus ....
I had not that much hope because Chelmos and Kylini are much similar ...But you never know.   
On the way to Kylini we found this Colchicum . I think it must be Colchicum graecum altough its looking not the same as other populations we found.   

[krisderaeymaeker]

On the plateau near the ski centre of Kylini we did not find any Crocus ...
More and more I was thinking that it was impossible to see flowering Crocus in the Pelops in september...
But we did find a very fine population of Colchicum pulchellum...
Karin Persson discribed this dwarf Colchicum in 1988 and the growing area of this one is also very limited.
A bit disappointed for the abcense of the Crocus but very glad with this dwarf and beautiful Colchicum ...

[krisderaeymaeker]

We go further with some plants from the area around Mount Parnon.
Here we find some nice populations of Colchicum parlatoris .In bigger populations it is always exciting to look for some extreme forms...
We even find some parlatoris with Crocus-shaped flowers   

[krisderaeymaeker]

Colchicum parlatoris grow in company with Cyclamen graecum and Sternbergia sicula .

[krisderaeymaeker]

Along the mainroad to Sparti  we found this Sternbergia sicula and Cyclamen graecum. A bit unusual to find such beautys along such mainroad with very busy traffic...

[Gerdk]

Colchicum parlatoris grow in company with Cyclamen graecum and Sternbergia sicula .

Wonderful set of photos - enjoyed them a lot!

Gerd

[Tony Willis]

On the plateau near the ski centre of Kylini we did not find any Crocus ...
More and more I was thinking that it was impossible to see flowering Crocus in the Pelops in september...
 

Kris beautiful pictures,lovely to see. A friend of mine went in September arriving on the 22nd some years ago and saw crocus by the thousands. I went the following year with his notes to all the same sites and found none. Another year on a later visit to the same sites in early October I too saw them in thousands. It all seems to depend on the timing of the rains.