Colchicum byzantinum.

Colchicum byzantinum.

 Colchicum byzantinum alba? above and below most books describe this Colchicum as cilicicum but I purchased this Colchicum from Rod Barwick in Tasmania as Colchicum byzantinum alba, so I'm not sure which it is but they are all lovely.

Colchicum byzantinum? pale form in our new garden above, with our native bee, the bee's are very dark in colour, and below without bee so you can see the stamens and filaments.

Flowers just opening up below, there is so little reference books or web information as to which is which in the Colchicums, I wish some one would do a reference book on just Colchicum.

Colchicum byzantinum (below) when reading E A Bowles book on A Handbook of Crocus & Colchicum this form of C. byzantinum is correct as the styles overtop the stamens and are tipped with with a very conspicuous crimson crook, I'm sorry the crimson colour has finished but you can defiantly see the crook in the top flower of the photo below.

Colchicum autumnale is flowering at the same time as Colchicum byzantinum and when these have all finished flowering my Colchicum cilicicum all come into flower, which is when Bowles says this is when they flower too. But to quote E A Bowles "C. cilicicum seeds freely and seedlings vary in form and colour, but C. byzantinum of late years has not been noticed to seed , and the garden stock now grown is almost certainly one clone, which increases so freely by multiplication of the corms that, like other garden plants, it may have become sterile." So does this make the white flowering C. byzantinum and the pale form C. byzantinum, Colchicum cilicicum I don't know!

Colchicum autumnale (above)

Merendera montana an easy species for the rock garden, a sunny well drained position is needed for this little bulb from the Central Pyrenees and Iberian peninsula.