Crocuses in Eastern Turkey, autumn 2011

[Janis Ruksans]

I found some cancellatus mazziaricus with undivided style, but occasional plants only. By flower shape yours really more looks as cancellatus. But to decide - you must check tunics. During my trip to Greece I was in similar situation - supposed that plant seen by me is abnormal form of hadriaticus up to checking it's tunics showing typical cancellatus reticulation. I well understand Erich Pasche who allways accents that identification by pictures only in crocuses is almost impossible   (with few exceptions, of course). You must check all features.
Janis

[Kees Jan]

I suppose this is more typical of Crocus cancellatus ssp. damascenus... By the way, we found VERY few plants in which the anthers filaments exceeded the style in length, this plant is an exception. This seems to be surprising, since this is said to be a feature of this subspecies in Fl of Turkey if I'm correct. Perhaps not the most important distinghuising feature of this subspecies...

Sorry to deviate from Crocus in this thread, but this is Biarum carduchorum, identified from our photographs by an expert on the subject. I find the Turkish Araceae a difficult group of plants to identify and I find it difficult to get good publications on this subject. For anyone using 'The bulbous plants of Turkey and Iran' (AGS publication) it is important to bear in mind that it shows only a small sample of the many Biarum species that can be found in Turkey. During 5 autumn trips in Turkey I found 5 species, but there are many more. Unfortunately we did not manage to find the bizar B. davisii ssp. marmarisense on the west coast last year.

[I.S.]

  Kees, I enjoy so much with your nice pictures from wild. I feel like I have been there with you.
For subsp. damascenus; yes it seems usually like your last pictures but not allways. I believe that the most important feature is the corm tunics. Shape, color, size, Style color and length may change by each location. For exapple here is my subps. damascenus from Diyarbakır. It looks like a niveus imposible to tell what it is from pictures!

[Kees Jan]

This is Crocus kotschyanus ssp. hakkariensis . It is named after Hakkari Province. We did not know the habitat of this species, and we found it quite to our surprise in very different conditions. Sometimes it grows in oak scrub/ light woodland, not unlike the type of vegetation in which Crocus karduchorum occurs. Except for the style, these two crocuses certainly seem to have similarities by the way. In other populations hakkariensis grows in much more open positions... The pics shown here are all from the same population, an open habitat. The only other Crocus that we found in the extreme southeast was cancellatus, perhaps or probably in its subspecies damascenus.

These are probably the last pics in this tread of my 2nd trip to eastern Turkey this autumn. I think I have shown you all the taxons and interesting populations of our 2nd trip. Most of my pics from this trip can be found on my website in a gallery at http://keesjan.smugmug.com/Botanical-trips/Asia/Eastern-Turkey-Oktober-2011/

I wil continue with some pics from my September trip at some stage, when I find the time! If you can't wait, these pics can be seen on my website in another gallery, dedicated to this particular trip: http://keesjan.smugmug.com/Botanical-trips/Asia/Eastern-Turkey-September-2011/

[Janis Ruksans]

I started to cataloguing my pictures from this autumn and so I can show you both - cancellatus and pallasii from Kubbe gec how they looks in cultivation.
Janis

[Kees Jan]

I have been looking at all my Crocus pics from Kubbe Gecidi, but I did not photograph pallasii, perhaps we were not at the right location for pallasii or not at the right time.

[Kees Jan]

Janis and I were just discussing Crocus cancellatus on Kubbe Gecidi by e-mail. And I think we are still not sure if it's ssp. cancellatus or ssp. damascenus at Kubbe Gecidi. Here are some examples and you can see that the style sometimes overtops the anthers (more usual for ssp. cancellatus) while in another case it is considerably shorter than the anthers, which would indicate damascenus...

I have seen a lot of Crocus cancellatus in eastern Turkey, in so called 'damascenus' territory, but I think the majority of the plants I saw had styles that overtopped the anthers... Perhaps the distribution of both subspecies is not quite accurately documented in Flora of Turkey or the style - anther relation is perhaps not the best property for separating these two subspecies .

[I.S.]

 Kees this is not easy to answer! I think your answer may be underground!
Here is the distrubution of subsp. cancellatus
http://turkherb.ibu.edu.tr/index.php?sayfa=1&tax_id=9422
And here is the distrubution of subsp. damascenus
http://turkherb.ibu.edu.tr/index.php?sayfa=1&tax_id=9426
According this info all of your cancellatus should be subsp. damascenus. But you are also right it is very often the style is longer then athers which is the feature of subsp. cancellatus.

[Maggi Young]

Kees, I need hardly tell you how relieved we all are that you and Marijn are safely returned to tell the tale of your travels... how I would enjoy the Eastern Turkey Lecture Day on 19th November with the NRV.... have a wonderful time, I'll be thinking of you all.

Here:
 http://www.vrvforum.be/forum/index.php?topic=554.msg15841#msg15841
Gerrit Eijkelenboom tells of his day .....
here are some of his comments....
"In the morning....
Rinus Bode with 154 photographs, with names neatly on paper for everyone. ....... many unknown species. ................  a Draba polytricha almost upside down hanging from a cliff. The best I found  to be Campanula choruhensis . (ED.:  Covered in IRG #8 and #9  )

In the afternoon Kees Jan Zwienen on bulbs in Turkey. For me, a very technical story, because I knew almost nothing about. That's okay, because it encourages us to try something . Crocus  and Colchicum, though, I continue to find such a difficult story. Whether the anthers are orange or red...   "

Yes, it sounds like a great day!

[Kees Jan]

News travels fast these days. It was quite interesting to have pics of some of the same locations in a very different season, Rinus showed pics of G. pyrenaica at Zigana Pass, while in my talks were pics from this terrain in autumn, with crocuses like suworowianus, scharojanii ssp. lazicus, vallicola and the hyrids between the latter two. I quite agree though that particularly certain groups of the genus Colchicum are very complex   and I'm the first to admit that many of the names I give to pics of the more complex groups of Colchicum are only quite accurate because of detailed geographical data and expert advice...  

[Maggi Young]

Kees ... for those of us who have not seen the plants in the wild it is even harder to pin down the identity 
Never mind at least they are all beautiful!
Glad you enjoyed the day as well.

[Kees Jan]

Ibrahim, thanks very much for your links to the distribution maps, which I suppose are largely in line with Fl. of Turkey. I did find C. cancellatus elsewhere though, just above Erzincan, that's not on either of those maps is it?!

Margarat: yes, I know, it can help a lot to see plants in the wild... On the other hand I sometimes get VERY     confused when I see all the variation within species in the wild, particularly in a genus like Tulipa. Anyway, whatever the names we try give to them, let's enjoy seeing and photographing them !

[Kees Jan]

Kees, I need hardly tell you how relieved we all are that you and Marijn are safely returned to tell the tale of your travels... how I would enjoy the Eastern Turkey Lecture Day on 19th November with the NRV.... have a wonderful time, I'll be thinking of you all.

I'm still selecting and cataloguing pics from my latest Turkish adventure and came across these pics of my fellow traveller photographing a Biarum species in the Turkish landscape... Seeing these pics it's perhaps hardly surprising that we ran into a little bit of trouble a few days later. Can't blame the people who considered plant-hunting a rather strange hobby !

[Hans A.]

Kees, thanks a lot for this superb topic - I enjoy the pictures of the crocus and their habitats very much!

[Kees Jan]

I've nearly uploaded all my pics from this trip to my website. Here are some interesting new pics of C. kotschyanus ssp. hakkariensis. The habitat is totally different from my previous pics of this Crocus: oak scrub and oak woodland  ! This is very similar to how the related Crocus karduchorum, another endemic species from SE Turkey, grows. The white form is rare, I think we found just one.

The last picture is our car at this crocus site, near the end of our trip, an hour or so before the start of some adventurous final stages... These crocuses are the last crocuses photographed during this trip.