COLCHICUM
Good gardeners can’t be prudes. After all, sex happens all the time out there among the roses and lilies, and some plants display their private parts in the most scandalous ways. As I write this, bumblebees are committing random acts of pollination all over my asters, and the monarch butterflies appear to be watching them, when not engaged in their own mating rituals. As for the praying mantises, it’s easy to tell what they have been up to because here and there you find the carcass of a poor male, killed by his mate for having the temerity to woo and win her. If Queen Victoria had known about this kind of open-air debauchery she probably would have outlawed gardening in the British Empire.
It’s not surprising, then, that my garden is home to a handful of naked ladies. The ladies in question are actually colchicum, crocus-like plants that sprout in the mid-autumn from corms planted a few weeks earlier. I added a few to my garden a week ago, when I happened to see them in a display at the garden center.
The somewhat racy common name comes from the fact that the flowers appear well before the leaves, hence the plant is “naked”. Colchicum are sometimes also known as autumn crocus, though they are not really crocuses at all, but members of the lily family. To further confuse things, there are also true autumn crocuses, which are members of the iris family. These include Crocus sativus, the source of culinary saffron. Eating parts of crocus sativus might be a unique culinary experience. Eating parts of colchicum would probably be a deadly one. As with any wild or domesticated plant that looks as if it might be edible, it’s best to check with an expert before putting it in your mouth or your stewpot.
The colchicum that I bought is known by the cultivar name, Waterlily, because that is exactly what it looks like. Think of a pale, rosy-purple crocus, with about four times the normal number of petals, and you will have some idea of the blossom’s appearance. My Waterlilies almost always surprise me, and I suspect that I am not alone. One day you see nothing but a patch of bare earth, and by the next day a fistful of frilly petals have emerged from the ground. The variety has been commercially available for about one hundred years, and is close in appearance to another double-flowered cultivar, Colchicum autumnale Pleniflorum. The white version is C. autumnale Alboplenum. As is always the case with colchicum, the large, dark green leaves appear much later.
But suppose you crave something simpler and more refined in your fall garden. There are plenty of single-flowered varieties in shades of purple, rosy-purple, pink and white. Colchicum bornmuelleri opens its mauve petals wide in the sunshine to reveal its lovely white throat. C. Violet Queen is an even more dramatic shade of purple. C. speciosum The Giant has large flowers that are closer to the red end of the purple color range, as are those of C. agrippinum, whose petals appear checkered. For pink flowers, try C. Byzantium, which sports multiple blossoms from a single corm. C. speciosum Album is a white, single-flowered variety that is best planted in large numbers for maximum effect. Album can also take some amount of shade, and provides a little light in darker parts of the garden.
Colchicum has been known and cultivated for millennia, and was grown by the ancient Greeks. Its name comes from Colchis, an area on the Black Sea where some species originate. The highly poisonous alkaloid colchicine, which is derived from the plant, can also be used medicinally, and is an old treatment for gout.
In the horticultural world, plants like daylilies are sometimes treated with colchicine to induce polyploidy, a condition where the treated plant’s cells contain more than the normal two identical sets of chromosomes. This can give the plant greater vigor and cause it to produce larger, showier flowers in more brilliant colors.
At this time of the year you can often find colchicum at local nurseries. It’s important to plant the corms as quickly as possible, as they will begin sprouting in the bag if left unattended. If for some reason, your colchicum are already sprouting, go ahead and plant them four inches down in well drained soil. They will go on about their business and produce flowers very quickly. Best of all, since most animals have a keen survival instinct, they will not even try to devour these pretty little plants.
It is a little late to order colchicum from the mail order vendors, but it may be worth taking a look at their websites for end-of-season inventory. Try the venerable White Flower Farm, P.O. Box 50, Route 63, Litchfield, Connecticut 06759, Phone 800-503-9624, www.whiteflowerfarm.com; or Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, 7900 Daffodil Lane, Gloucester, VA 23061, Phone 804-693-3966, www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com. Both companies offer free catalogs.