Description
The parent species C. vallicola is one of the very first of the autumnal species to appear, usually in August, rarely even in July though it also carries on later than this, especially if planted later and we have had flowers into October and November under these circumstances. Normally this makes beautifully shaped, pure white flowers with miasmic violet veins towards the tube and sympathetically-coloured, frilled and divided cream to sulphur stigma. The petals are drawn out into wispy tips which enhance an already elegant appearance.
Some years ago new variants were noticed in the original stock which opened white but then these flowers developed a blue-purple colouration with increasing age. This happened for three seasons and so the colour formation is not a one-off thing. My initial thought was that hybridisation was involved, but given the paucity of other species which flowered early, like vallicola the list of possible parents was a short one. C. kotschyanus was my first thought, but the new form lacks any trace of the coloured style of that species and the corms look nothing like its characteristic disc-shape. Indeed the corms of the new colour form are typical for vallicola. There really seem no other parents which might be appropriate and so I am thrown back to the thought that this is a coloured variant just of vallicola itself. There seems to be no trace of any other species, in flower, corm or leaf characters and the corms are healthy and happy, so that infection is also ruled out. Other observations are that the colour develops with age only. It seems that coloured forms are known with, for example Crocus caspius & C. hadriaticus, and that Tuareg this is simply a desirable colour-form of the pure species.
Our original stock of Crocus vallicola was raised by seed from the original 3 corms found by Antoine Hoog and Erich Pasche in N. Turkey, Trabzon province, growing in high altitude alpine turf with Ϲyclamen parviflorum. This newly named cultivar has appeared spontaneously in that seed raised stock. It has occurred only in this one geographically attributed stock and not in two others traceable to other areas, which are also grown.
As with the original stock, this really needs a damp well-drained humus-rich soil to give its best, it does NOT like hot dry conditions. It is fully hardy with us here, growing outside all year having coped with a trough of -17ºC and sustained low temperatures for 10-14 days, without damage.
