Early search in Greece - 2012

[Sinchets]

Trying again to post pictures.
Success! Pictures of Crocus pallasii with longed necked corms from an area northeast of Thessaloniki.

[Janis Ruksans]

It looks very similar to plants from Chios and Turkey (by flower). I found mine plants NNE of Thessaloniki. It is far too general dirrection as there are plenty of small roads and a lot of possible localities. I visited two spots and on both it was. Now I sent leaves of it and allies for DNA.
Janis

[Sinchets]

The flowers are also similar to 'traditional' short necked forms found elsewhere in northern Greece and throughout Bulgaria. Our 'longnecked' ones were in several localities in an area roughly NE of Thessaloniki, so presumably they have a wider range including the area where yours were found. I will attach pictures of other northern Greek and Bulgarian C.pallasii for reference- all have more deeply striped than the Crimean forms we have seen.
Attached are samples of C.pallasii pallasii from locations in Bulgaria and northern Greece:

[I.S.]

   According the Simon's photos I can not find any differences from my pallasii photos which made in my part of Turkey . But my all pallasii have short neck!

[Sinchets]

I agree Ibrahim. The only difference we noted was in the length of the bulb neck and the length of the persistent fibres around this formed from previous years leaves. This was between 7 and 12 cm compared with less than 2cm in Bulgarian C.pallasii pallasii.

We have yet to see if this feature is present in the next generation of garden propagated plants i.e we need to see if it is genetic and present in F1 seedlings to determine if it is part of these plants genetics or a response to growing in deep soils.
The major sites we know of for C.pallasii in Bulgaria are usually on shallow soils over limestone or sandstone. The long necked forms we found in northern Greece were found in deeper soils in grasslands and orchards.

Janis has found similar forms in another part of northern Greece- so clearly this form has a wider distribution in this area.

[Oron Peri]

The final part of my report:

 In morning we visit ruins of Mykenian civilisation and there I’m picturing beautiful Hyacinthella leucophea growing just between more than 3000 years old house ruins.
Janis

Hi Janis
Wonderful and interesting trip, Thank you for shearing!
The Romulea you have seen is R. bulbucodium and the plant in the photo is not Hyacinthella but Bellevalia hyacinthoides.
Oron

[I.S.]

  Simon,
  Thanks for the photos, The pallasii on my part have lots of leaves an average 9-10 but the long necked pallasii seems to have 4-5 ! (on two photos of Janis)
  I could attache few photos to show mines. (which are in the pots also in first year)
 
 

[Janis Ruksans]

I'm attaching mine pallasii from Crimea, Chios (Island at W coast of Tu), Labranda (SW Tu) and Ariasos (near Antalya). The single differene seem to be just in lenghth of tunic neck. May be you noted that type subsps (pallasii pallasii) in general has longer stigmatic branches well overtopping anthers but not allways - see picture of Crimean plants from same locality and grown in same pot. Would like to know from Simon - how looks flowers of long necked plants in this aspect. From pictures not so clear.
Janis

[Sinchets]

I would say that from looking at other pictures I have of Bulgarian C.pallasii pallasii the anther and stigma lengths seems variable within populations.
The Crimean plant I have from you has the smallest stigmas and I have pictures of local pallasii, which show stigmas much longer than anthers, but never as much as in your specimen from Antalya.
As for leaf number and width I will not be able to check until the snow has melted.

[Sinchets]

The snow is starting to melt here- so I should be able to make some measurements in the next few days. Hopefully we will soon hear the results of the DNA tests and know if this new C.pallasii form, which we first saw in November 2010 and found by Janis this month is significantly different genetically from C.pallasii pallasii.

[Maggi Young]

We are very interested to hear the DNA results. 

( and pleased the snow is melting in Bulgaria , too!)

[Sinchets]

It's great to be back out in the garden again and to see outdoor flowers again, Maggi.

Of the C.pallasii I was able to measure just now I have the following measurements:
Crocus pallasii pallasii ex Crimea leaf no. 8-13; leaf width less than 1mm; leaf length 4-5.5cm
Crocus pallasii pallasii ex NE Bulgaria leaf no. 9-13; leaf width 2mm; leaf length 4-8cm
Crocus pallasii pallasii ex SC Bulgaria leaf no. 9-14; leaf width 1mm; leaf length 4-8.5cm

The pallasii from NE Bulgaria are noticeably wider and with a much more obvious white stripe and ribbing on the back of the leaves.
The pallasii ex Crimea was bought as one from Crimea, but I now wonder if it is - as Janis said above that these have much wider leaves.

[Croquin]

Hello Sinchets,

Good to see the pictures.
Morphological differences are abundant and interesting.

The kind of similar observations I could make on C. sativus geocultivars.
I am starting to lift corms out of the ground and there are also many differences, such as corm size and daughter corm amounts.

DNA analyses have been mentionned in the thread, I am wandering if micro-differences in the genetic makeup of such variants would be detected ?
The analysis would need to be exhaustive.
If not, detecting existing minor mutations would come up to chance, wouldn't it ?

The differences I have observed between 2 C. sativus clones are so extreme that I am even questionning the fact that one of them is C. sativus (but it gives the best spice).
I would like to have DNA or biochemical analyses run on tissue samples, in order to rule out C. cartwrightianus...

Do you know about any lab that could run such investigations in the EU ?