Description
(syn. thunbergii urashima Soshin)
The colour variation and the selections of urashima in Japan are numerous and many are still very scarce and expensive. There are a few albino forms known and Soshin is one of these. Soshin though sometimes called white is in fact the “cleanest”, very pale yellow-green form with the most white in it. It lacks reds and browns (anthocyanins) in the flower and even in the tubers and thus the tubers are a lovely white colour too.
Soshin (which apparently translates as “goddess”) is both beautiful and also a good grower under conditions that suit the ordinary forms. It reliably makes extra bulblets around the main tuber every season. It is hard to understand why such a superb form is still rare in cultivation, though the bulblets of urashima do usually stay dormant for their first season after being made, ‘reforming’ into a different shape underground before sprouting, with leaves, 18 months after you plant them. In this time I wonder how many get thrown away for “not having come up”, blaming the plant rather than the cultivator?
Incidentally other ‘true alba‘ forms with no colour at all, not even green, in the flower seem to be not stable and are poor growers.
