Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Bulbs => Crocus => Topic started by: DaveM on March 24, 2009, 07:36:23 PM
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Sorry it's taken so long to fulfill my promise to post pics of Crocus captured during a visit to the Taurus mountains in late Feb and early March. So, here goes.
These are a bit of a mixed bag. The weather wasn't too kind and there had been a big dump of snow not long before we went. The snow line was at about 1000 m and so many of the species we had hoped to see were smashed to bits or present in very small numbers. The cold, overcast weather made it difficult to photo some species and great efforts were made to "encourage" specimens to open at least a wee bit. This included at some localities, a "hot-water" bottle was placed near to the clumps and a large plastic tub placed over the plant and bottle!! Amazingly it worked a treat - but not as good as a warm spring day - and we all froze whilst waiting!!
1. Crocus sieheanus, Nur Dag - rather damaged by snow melt
2. Crocus habitat from near Pozanti
3. Crocus danfordiae - a miserable little species - in small numbers only from 2
4-8. Crocus fleischeri - I really like the starry quality some of these are from the Pozanti locality, others from near Korkuteli
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Next batch:
Crocus graveolens - we saw this at a number of localities, including the Pozanti location of the last post, but also father east in the Taurus to the north of Kozan. Note variable markings on outside of tepals, some without.
Crocus reticulatus subsp. reticulatus - also seen north of Kozan and elsewhere
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I had high hopes of seeing abundant Crocus chrysanthus but only a few early flowerings were seen at Gundogmus, along with Crocus antalyensis...... (at same site as Iris stenophylla subsp. allisonii, and growing also with Colchicum minutum)
Crocus adanensis, in oak woodland near Yarpuz, Nur Dag, farther east. The woodland floor also hosted Cyclamen coum and Cyclamen pseudibericum.
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The low part of the north-facing screes on the shores of the seasonal Avlan Golu, near Elmali are host to the really special Crocus baytopiorum. The screes were quite mobile - a quite unusual habitat for a crocus I would have thought. Why would any self-respecting crocus want to grow in such a coarse, blocky deposit??? No competition perhaps?? Anyway, this crocus has quite an unusual colour which I hope I have captured well. A truly beautiful species.
Parts of the scree were made stable by trees and shrubs, under which there were abundant Cyclamen alpinum and also Crocus biflorus subsp isauricus
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Great shots and crocuses. I am proud to have such treasures in my country
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Other Crocus biflorus were seen also:
Crocus biflorus subsp nubigena
and
Crocus biflorus subsp pseudonubigena
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Thanks Arda - it was a pleasure to visit your country once again.
For me, the real gem of a crocus was this one from the Antalya region. The colour was unexpected. The habitat was in previously cultivated terraces, beneath sweet chestnut (Castanea) trees - and flowering in profusion. A truly magnificent sight that lifted our spirits on a warm morning after some days of cold overcast and snowy conditions.....
Crocus biflorus, subsp. crewei roseoviolaceus
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What a marvellous time you had Dave and what a wonderful collection of crocuses all in one place. Such lovely variations too. :) Thanks for sharing your trip.
Arda, you have these beautiful plants available to you every day. Lucky you. ;D
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Fermi,
super crocus pictures - all very lovely, great color variations and all desireable!
Refering to the first pcitures - who a companied you on this tour?
Somebody from the forum?
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Thanks Lesley and Armin - it was a brilliant trip despite the weather and such cold at times. Not really in one place, Lesley, I think we must have travelled about 4000 km in the two weeks. Turkey is such a huge country with lots of places to explore.
Armin - no other forum members were there. Trip was led by Chris Gardener and Basak Guner (daughter of Adil Guner, Istanbul Botanic Garden)
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Thanks for sharing your trip .... the crocus are well worth the wait!
It must help having local guides, guess the UK end was organised by a tour operator?
The first pic in the most recent set is of two plants with extra petals. Hard to tell if they were identical and it would be quite unusual for such a feature to be stable, yet for two to occur together it just might be so.
Wonderful to see such a range of species ... despite the weather?
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Dave! what lovely crocuses are these! You made me envy now. :o
It seems you were much luckyer than me. I was also in the sw part of Turkey in the same time but I wasn't so lucky :( There were too much snow everywhere. You took me there again with all these nice pictures.
For your last one I would prefer to say C. biflorus subsp. isauricus instead of C. biflorus subsp. crewei. I have seen this crocus in many different locations. They were all white and with 2 or 3 broad grey leafs. Second thing it doesn't accur in Antalya province!
Arda, Welcome! This is the realy best forum for bulbous plants as you see here. You will find many
friends in love with bulbs ;)
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Tony, I was also thinking the same. Two of them with eight petals and from different corms which seems with same ages!!!
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Dave really wonderful shots of the crocus in the wild.Always a pleasure to see.
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Thanks Dave must have been a great trip 8) 8)
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Great photos, Dave - many thanks for sharing them with us!
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Great report Dave !
Wonderful pictures - I think I love all biflorus types !
It was well worth the wait !
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Arda, you have these beautiful plants available to you every day. Lucky you. ;D
I know, but I wish I had the chance to use this opportunity. I don't have time/money to visit these places at least for now.
Arda, Welcome! This is the realy best forum for bulbous plants as you see here. You will find many
friends in love with bulbs ;)
Hello and thanks! Our paths have crossed once again :)
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Thanks for the kind comments re pix.
Tony and Ibrahim - I have to admit that I hadn't been very observant by not noticing the extra tepals. I know this is common in some plants, for example we saw large populations of Anemone coronaria with a huge range of petal numbers. But in crocus, how common is this?? I've not noticed it in the species and varieties I grow - but then...... would I ??
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Ibrahim
This is the first time I have seen these species in the wild whereas you have greater experience. However, our leaders have seen a lot of these different biflorus subspecies, AND we did use the Flora. We looked very carefully at what I have called C biflorus subsp crewei, including at the character of the style with a hand lens. I understand that in some populations crewei can be the colour I've shown, though you are right it is typically white. I am convinced that it is not isauricus: I showed a typical isauricus in another post and this has yellow anthers, though the grey stripe that it should have is not obvious (not black as in my crewei). Funnily enough, the immediate reaction of several of us at the time was that this crewei is reminiscent of C wattiorum, but of course that is an autumn flowering species. I showed wattiorum in a previous post a while ago so I'll post the two side by side for comparison. (The colours are much nearer than these would suggest)
Anyway, whatever the true affinity of this species, I think we can agree that it is a splendid plant!?
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Dave ,
thank's again for your pictures !
Crocus baytopiorum in the wild in fantastic for me !!
Thank's for sharing so nice pictures.
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I'm glad you think so too, Fred. The colour is magical and somehow hard to describe truly. Any thoughts on why it should be a scree dweller??
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Ibrahim
Oops, I may have misled you with respect of the location where we saw C biflorus subsp crewei. I've just rechecked my field notes and it was at a place called Derekoyu, in the mountains north of Alanya. Not sure whether this is strictly Antalya province.
I'm sorry to hear that you had a leaner time than I with the flowers. Just to remind you of the winter conditions and give the others a sense of our frustration, I've posted a winter scene. But courtesy of information from the hotelier where we stayed in Ibradi, down in the niche between the snow bank and the rock bluff in the foreground there were the first of the snowdrops..... Galanthus elwesii
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Thanks for the kind comments re pix.
Tony and Ibrahim - I have to admit that I hadn't been very observant by not noticing the extra tepals. I know this is common in some plants, for example we saw large populations of Anemone coronaria with a huge range of petal numbers. But in crocus, how common is this?? I've not noticed it in the species and varieties I grow - but then...... would I ??
Extra petals is something which does happen occasionally in cultivation. Usually it is a one-off seasonal thing perhaps caused by abnormal conditions at the time of flower bud initiation (end of previous growing season/during dormancy). However there is the chrysanthus form/cultivar known as Goldmine which does produce 'double' flowers every year.
You have seen two plants with the same 'mutation' in the wild. As they appear similar and are close enough to be from clonal increase there is room to speculate that this might be the 'normal' flower for these corms rather than a seasonal occurrence.
..... You'll have to take us back next year for another look ;D
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Thanks, Tony. Interesting. Back next year? maybe ...... but probably later. There is just so much to see in that part of Turkey, of which the crocus are just a part :D.
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Dave, I have seen before the pictures of your crewei 25 km from north east from Alanya. This area belongs to the Antalya province and in my folders there is no record for C. biflorus subsp. crewei in this province.
What I know;
Leaves 2-3(-4), 1.5-2 mm broad; anthers blackish-maroon (S.W. Anatolia) . b. subsp. crewei
Leaves usually 4-7; anthers yellow but often with agreyisii connective; filaments 4-7 mm, filiform (S.W. & S. Anatolia) A. subsp. issauricus
What I have seen as crewei two weeks ago no one have more then 3 leafs but some of yours seems to have more.
I want to attach two pics of same crocus which taken in north of Alanya by my friend who live there.
I have named these as C. biflorus subsp. isauricus :-\ :-\
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Dave I think you are right at least partly - it isn't isauricus and more close to crewei, but locality, color - we still very little know Turkish crocuses and their distribution
Ibrahim - your pictures just confirmed Dave's naming - look on leaves and compare them with flower size and you can judge appr. about their relative width - it is not easy on picture but you clearly can see that Daves plants has comparatively much wider leaves than on your picture of isauricus.
crewei has 2-3 leaves up to 2 mm wide
isauricus - usually 4 -7 leaves and they are only 0.5 - 1 mm wide
Janis
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Janis, Thank you very much. For me it is important to know your decision, so you are saying mines are isauricus and for Dave's are creweii! I tought they could be same. They have photographed nearly same area. This area is quite east of Antalya, in this case I will enlage the distribution of crewei untill that point.
If I have any chance one day to see that location I will check again.
Dave, I will ask second thing about location of C. biflorus subsp. nubigena! which side of Antalya?
I know this biflorus grup is very complex but I have to study very well on because I can see everywhere somethings from this grup.
No sight! about C. paschei with golden throat and C. kerndorffiorum showy style! They sould been somewhere on your way ;)
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Janis, Thank you very much. For me it is important to know your decision, so you are saying mines are isauricus and for Dave's are creweii! I tought they could be same. They have photographed nearly same area. This area is quite east of Antalya, in this case I will enlage the distribution of crewei untill that point.
If I have any chance one day to see that location I will check again.
Dave, I will ask second thing about location of C. biflorus subsp. nubigena! which side of Antalya?
I know this biflorus grup is very complex but I have to study very well on because I can see everywhere somethings from this grup.
No sight! about C. paschei with golden throat and C. kerndorffiorum showy style! They sould been somewhere on your way ;)
Ibrahim, I'm not 100% sure that it is crewei - possibly something new but not isauricus.
Janis
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Thanks, Ibrahim and Janis for your comments. Interesting. Your pictures, Ibrahim are splendid. Why do you say this is isauricus - the first clearly has black anthers - not as strong as the ones I illustrated but nevertheless black? I didn't think that isauricus had such a character (I realise that this is only one character and there are others to distinguish these - including a distinctive appearance to the surface of the style which of course we can't see on any of our photos). Also I don't think there's much of a problem with distribution as this locality is not that far from other well known occurrences of crewei - maybe not in Antalya province but not far away.
Hmmmm. Perhaps this is getting far too complicated for my simple brain - all this discussion goes to prove is that biflorus is a very variable species. As a lumper at heart maybe we should stick to that. However, whatever our opinions on the naming of this, the plant I illustrated would make a very fine introduction to cultivation!!!
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Ibrahim, the Crocus biflorus subsp nubigena was seen near another village of Derekoyu, a little to the north-west of Korkuteli.
As for Crocus paschei, I'm not sure that I could tell the difference from Crocus adanensis ;D The locality we saw adanensis was supposed to be paschei ??? ???
And no, we did not see kerndorffiorum :(
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The plant you show as Crocus adanensis matches what I grow as Crocus paschei. Like you I have difficulties with the differences between these two. The white band in the throat of adanensis is the only easily identifiable difference but I don't think flower colour is enough to seperate taxa.
Watch this space for news from someone who can help us!
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Interesting. I agree with you that flower colour only is not enough - we had the two descriptions with us and came to the conclusion that both names would fit the plant we saw. Taxonomically adanensis would have priority, I believe. I do hope somebody can tell us, and illustrate, the difference.
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At first many thanks for sharing these beauty. All of us we agree that Dave's crewei or whatever is a splendid plant.
Dave, I named mine isauricus, as you see in second picture it has five lieves ( crewei can't have 5 ) If you mind for blackish anther, isauricus sometimes may have.
The features what I accept for isauricus; Leaves usually 4-7; anthers yellow but often with agreyish connective; filaments 4-7 mm, filiform (S.W. & S. Anatolia)
For your C. biflorus subsp. nubigena, I have record in Antalya and in Muğla. Korkuteli is very cloase to Muğla so location is right. I mind distributions because of C. biflorus ssp. are not faithful often.
Crocus adanensis and Crocus paschei occur in same province that is why I asked about.
I believe that your C. adanensis is very good sample this species. C. paschei has very nice golden center,
out side of petal speckled buf, shape of flovers seems me different. I have seen some pics of this crocus in a gallery of my riend. I would not like to use here.
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In Crocus paschei throat is sometimes light but almost allways yellow shaded (although I have few specimens with almost no yellow in throat, but then it isn't white, it is more grayish diffused on petals, without distinct border), leaves must be grass green.
In Crocus adanensis throat is white and well defined from segments (something starry but clearly bordered from lilac part), leaves grey-green, there are greater contrast between outer and inner petals and I never had problems to distinguish my samples (grown by me).
Of course - both are very close relatives by phylogeny.
Janis
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Thank -you Janis. I will take another look at my plants, looking especially at the leaves.
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The pictures are stunning!! The biflorus ssp crewei (and that other wattiorum) have definitely been added to my "needs" list. ;D Beautiful. But then, so many of the flowers you posted were so beautiful. 8) Thank you.