Weather here is dark. Not many crocuses I can bring inside to make pictures. There are not much space on my window-sill. Pictures of flowers I'm making on my table side by side with computer. Some gardener asked me - what light I use for such good and natural colours. It is my table lamp equipped with element Osram Dulux S - G23, 11W Cool White 4000K
Many new species were described in last years by Helmut Kerndorff and Erich Pasche and quite important feature for identification is number of ribs in leaf underneath groves. It is not so easy to check this. Leaves are small and you need very good eyes. I not remember who just, but most likely it was Erich Pasche who during visit to my nursery showed me very handy way how to check crocus leaf crossection. Sorry, if this lecture was given be by another visitor - my memory is not so good more.
So I used this day for some rest out of computer for making of some pictures illustrating how this checking can be done. At first you need good scissors to make good cross cutting of crocus leaf for not press (squeeze) leaf. You must take very small peace - less than 1 cm long. After that you fix half open scissors (here I used two bricks) and put in the keel made by scissors arms the peace of leaf. It is very easy to fix it there. After that left only to adjust your cameras sharpness and make a picture. Later I modified this. After cutting of leaf peace you can take sharp wooden tooth-pick and to spit in the leaf peace, being careful not to damage leaf's shape. The other end you can fix in anything at hand - in orange fruit, here I used half potato.
Attention must be given to position of leaf peace to lens of camera - it must be as much perpendicular to lens as possible. I'm using small tripod, but on field I pictured even from hand. Making those sample pictures today I adjusted ISO to 4000. Better to use lower value (400) - then picture will be sharper. Today is very dark and I didn't use additional light.
Such pictures you can check on computers screen where you easy can magnify picture.
On attached pictures are cross-cut of C. nevadensis leaf. So special, that only by this you can identify species.
