Description
Crocus goulimyi is a wonderful autumnal species with robust flowers held on long, strong tubes, in October. In colouring this can vary from the most well-known, soft violet, through to white in one direction and a much rarer deep violet form at the other extreme.
Our named clone Lambocambos is raised from a single corm collected, in flower, near the village of the same name, in Mani, in November 2011. It is our deepest, darkest colour form with the classic goulimyi shape in which the inner and outer whorls are differentiated into large and small. Lambocambos is clonal, raised by vegetative division and not by seed. You will find some slight colour variation however as there is an ageing effect, the pigment becoming slightly paler as the flower approaches senescence, though it holds its colour well throughout normal flowering.
Crocus goulimyi is a native of Malea and Mani, Greece. It is best known from Mani where it was first discovered by Dr C. N. Goulimyis in the early 1950s. In all of its forms, this stands the worst of the autumnal weather here and still looks good, both flowering and increasing well. It does well also in pots or pans under alpine glass, or plunged in frames but brought inside when the first flowers open (not sooner or it will become leggy). It can happily live back in the plunge again after flowering.
Its characteristically rounded corms are easily grown in a sunny, well-drained spot or pot in a loam-based compost, producing its faintly pollen-scented flowers from spotted and streaked bracts, from the later half of September onwards. Increase is good from both seed and offsets, though it will appreciate good feeding or a fertile soil if the offsets are to reach a decent size. Seedlings are not of course, entitled to the clonal name.
Lambocambos was introduced to our lists, and to cultivation, March 2018.
