Description
One of our treasures, this is a strong-growing, excellent garden plant with great big, weather resistant, white flowers, on long tubes, in October and November. Floriferous and very lovely. The slight difference in length between the inner set of three petals and the outer set of three, which is common to most forms of this species, is very evident in this clone.
Before his death, the late Michael Hoog told me the story of this plant. It was selected originally by Michael, then at van Tubergen, from a stock of selected seedlings of Crocus goulimyi raised from the original 3 corms which were sent directly from Greece by Dr. Goulimis himself to Michael. These parent corms were from near Areopolis. The white plant first flowered in November of 1972 and it was subsequently preserved and propagated by Michael (and in turn by ourselves, and others, ever since). The clone should have been named “Michael Hoog” under which name it was shown as to the RHS committee in 1983. It gained an AM but the clonal name was rejected by the RHS on the grounds that a name was not needed, since there was only one white clone in cultivation. Subsequently this has, of course, proven to be incorrect and unfortunately when a name was needed, Michael’s seedling that should have borne his name, was christened as “Mani White“.
