{"id":33,"date":"2006-10-02T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2006-10-02T16:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=33"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:26","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:26","slug":"colchicum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/colchicum\/","title":{"rendered":"Colchicum"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLCHICUM
\n<\/font><\/font><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Good gardeners can’t be prudes.<\/strong>\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If Queen Victoria had known about this kind of open-air debauchery she probably would have outlawed gardening in the British Empire.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s not surprising, then, that my garden is home to a handful of naked ladies.\u00a0 The ladies in question are actually colchicum, crocus-like plants that sprout in the mid-autumn from corms planted a few weeks earlier.\u00a0 I added a few to my garden a week ago, when I happened to see them in a display at the garden center. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0The somewhat racy common name comes from the fact that the flowers appear well before the leaves, hence the plant is “naked”\u009d.\u00a0 Colchicum are sometimes also known as autumn crocus, though they are not really crocuses at all, but members of the lily family.\u00a0 To further confuse things, there are also true autumn crocuses, which are members of the iris family.\u00a0 These include Crocus sativus, the source of culinary saffron.\u00a0\u00a0 Eating parts of crocus sativus might be a unique culinary experience.\u00a0 Eating parts of colchicum would probably be a deadly one.\u00a0 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.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The colchicum that I bought is known by the cultivar name, Waterlily, because that is exactly what it looks like.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 My Waterlilies almost always surprise me, and I suspect that I am not alone.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The variety has been commercially available for about one hundred years, and is close in appearance to another double-flowered cultivar, Colchicum autumnale Pleniflorum.\u00a0 The white version is C. autumnale Alboplenum.\u00a0 As is always the case with colchicum, the large, dark green leaves appear much later.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But suppose you crave something simpler and more refined in your fall garden.\u00a0 There are plenty of single-flowered varieties in shades of purple, rosy-purple, pink and white.\u00a0 Colchicum bornmuelleri opens its mauve petals wide in the sunshine to reveal its lovely white throat. \u00a0C. Violet Queen is an even more dramatic shade of purple.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 For pink flowers, try C. Byzantium, which sports multiple blossoms from a single corm.\u00a0\u00a0 C. speciosum Album is a white, single-flowered variety that is best planted in large numbers for maximum effect.\u00a0 Album can also take some amount of shade, and provides a little light in darker parts of the garden.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Colchicum has been known and cultivated for millennia, and was grown by the ancient Greeks.\u00a0 Its name comes from Colchis, an area on the Black Sea where some species originate.\u00a0 The highly poisonous alkaloid colchicine, which is derived from the plant, can also be used medicinally, and is an old treatment for gout.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 This can give the plant greater vigor and cause it to produce larger, showier flowers in more brilliant colors.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At this time of the year you can often find colchicum at local nurseries.\u00a0 It’s important to plant the corms as quickly as possible, as they will begin sprouting in the bag if left unattended.\u00a0 If for some reason, your colchicum are already sprouting, go ahead and plant them four inches down in well drained soil.\u00a0 They will go on about their business and produce flowers very quickly.\u00a0 Best of all, since most animals have a keen survival instinct, they will not even try to devour these pretty little plants.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Try the venerable White Flower Farm, P.O. Box 50, Route 63, Litchfield, Connecticut 06759, Phone 800-503-9624, www.whiteflowerfarm.com<\/a>; or Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, 7900 Daffodil Lane, Gloucester, VA 23061, Phone 804-693-3966, www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Both companies offer free catalogs.
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COLCHICUM \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Good gardeners can’t be prudes.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As I write this, bumblebees are committing random acts of pollination all over my asters, and the monarch butterflies appear to be … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1742,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/1742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}