Crocus March 2012

[ArnoldT]

Crocus kosaninii

and an unknown.

[Janis Ruksans]

Crocus chrysanthus Sunspot - 2 years in same pot without replanting, grown isolated as suspected for virus (some only this spring  - top left corner plant) and
Crocus bed 2 days ago
Janis

[Sinchets]

Why is it C. crewei 'Bergamo' Janis? I have many friends in Bergamo Italy and would love to give a pot full of this to them as a gift?

I got it from late Jim Archibald by his wish - so I can't check it's identity. Locality name confuses me, too, but such was label.
Janis

Is it possible it refers to Bergama near the ancient city of Pergamon?

This weekend we made a trip looking for different populations of Bulgarian Crocus chrysanthus. Its distribution in Bulgaria is now disjunct with some populations separated by land use change. Driving south towards Turkey the make up of the population changes.
In the Tundja Hilly Country we have found populations where the only differences are that some flowers have purple floral tubes while in others they are yellow. Further south in the Sakar Hills there are populations where markings are visible on the external 3 petals of the flowers. These are never very much but some flowers have a darker teardrop and some a darker whiskering effect at the base of the petals.
At an isolated population some 10km from the Turkish border much more variation can be seen with some individuals having darker stripes and/ or speckles covering the entire outer 3 petals.

[Sinchets]

I am currently trying to build up a better understanding of Crocus biflorus within Bulgaria. Again distribution of this species is disjunct due to land use changes. Populations from the SE of Bulgaria in the Tundja Hilly Country, Sakar and Strandja floristic regions are much paler than our local populations here in the Stara Planina.
Although some populations number in the thousands the main forms range from white to pale blue most having only a slight degree of marking or striping on the external petals. These pictures show some of the forms, which can be seen in these areas.

[I.S.]

  Simon very nice chrysanthus and adamii forms..
It seems this biflorus adamii is very rich in variation.

[Sinchets]

Thanks Ibrahim. From memory these forms of C.biflorus seem to be similar to the ones you showed 2 years ago from your part of Turkey. What are your C.chrysanthus like?

[Janis Ruksans]

Why is it C. crewei 'Bergamo' Janis? I have many friends in Bergamo Italy and would love to give a pot full of this to them as a gift?

I got it from late Jim Archibald by his wish - so I can't check it's identity. Locality name confuses me, too, but such was label.
Janis

Is it possible it refers to Bergama near the ancient city of Pergamon?

Many thanks Simon, it looks perfect. The label was hand-written so it is possible that I misread it and "Bargamo" sounded for me more common, although I didn't think about Italy, of course.
Janis

[I.S.]

Why is it C. crewei 'Bergamo' Janis? I have many friends in Bergamo Italy and would love to give a pot full of this to them as a gift?

I got it from late Jim Archibald by his wish - so I can't check it's identity. Locality name confuses me, too, but such was label.
Janis

Is it possible it refers to Bergama near the ancient city of Pergamon?

Many thanks Simon, it looks perfect. The label was hand-written so it is possible that I misread it and "Bargamo" sounded for me more common, although I didn't think about Italy, of course.
Janis

Pergamon is an old roman city. Now we call it Bergama which is a small city in the Province of İzmir and this area is nubigena location!
 That crewei has dark spot in the throath which I have never seen in crewei. Ofcourse it has interesting creamy outer petals but for me it is more close to nubigena!
 Kindly regards...

[Tony Willis]

Not up to the standard seen above but may be of interest.

Crocus pelistericus white form sadly nibbled on its way to flowering!

[ashley]

If we will look on map of Turkey we will see N of Manavgat (E of Antalya) where is Akseki and Crocus biflorus isauricus (generally with lighter or darker blue ground color of petals, anthers sometimes with blackish connective, but many only yellow) growing around it. Further to East - N of Alanya it is replaced by C. roseoviolaceus (very deep blue) making some borderline between isauricus and this one. Still further to East grows this one (my numbers RUDA-008, RUDA-020,JJVV-040) - there are no one blue, only whites mostly with distinctly black anthers or connective, rarely anthers is yellow. It is something close to isauricus but general flower color, anthers and geographical separation - force me to think that it is different. By EP publications it is regarded as isauricus aff. but I think that it will be described by him as new one very soon.
Janis

Many thanks Janis.  There seems almost no end to the diversity of crocuses in this part of Turkey.  Stunning plants.

[Janis Ruksans]

This one is really true C. olivieri subsp. istanbulensis collected at it's locus classicus (not by me, of course). By flower not possible to separate from type subspecies, but it has different leaf morfology and corm tunics. It is first blooming in my collection. Corm from Ibrahim still didn't start flowering. I think this is first picture of this extreme rariety in our forum. As I hear, in nature there are not more than 100 plants left.
Janis

[Janis Ruksans]

I pictured few quite unusual Crocus tauricus plants. Seeing only flower I never could attach to them name of C. tauricus - dark throat, dark connective. But all of them are collected on Crimean peninsula. But identification isn't hopeless. They have very special basal rings of corm tunics. Very long tooth iterrupted by several short ones and again one very long and so. I don't know another crocus with such basal rings. Leaves are very greyish/bluish green, too.
Janis

[Maggi Young]

Janis, I was just enjoying that photo of C. olivieri subsp. istanbulensis- which I think is quite beautiful... then you show these tauricus forms- these are also exquisite.
Long live the Crocus! 

[ronm]

C. olivieri istanbuliensis. Well Janis, I will send you corms of my plants later this year. You can then decide.
The pictures in your book, are they true C. olivieri istanbuliensis?

[Guff]

Camera couldn't capture the right shade.

1-Michael's Purple