Description
This is naturally a very small tuberous species, though none of the Gymnospermium are monsters anyway. It make simply divided, glabrous foliage with each of the three leaflets being entire, without any further division. The foliage is of a very healthy, slightly blue-green. The leaves, which are red-tinted upon emergence appear soon after the flowers and the flowers themselves appear very early in the spring, often in March, lasting until April. They are a very bright, and vivid yellow, in a colour and shape familiar to all who know the flowers of Berberis in the garden and, remarkably, this dwarf tuberous species, is a member of the Berberis family, as a closer examination of the 6-petalled flowers will confirm.
Despite emerging early, this is a very tough and hardy little plant. Both the leaf growth and flowers will take ice and snow with impunity. One thing it does need is perfect drainage however. Having said this, we prefer to keep it under glass in a pan but simply in order to appreciate its superb early flowers. These are both nectar-rich and honey-scented. You can fit several in even a small pan as the tubers seldom exceed 2cm in diameter.
Gymnospermium altaicum is supposedly native from Greece eastwards to China and over the border into Russia though several species may actually be involved in that overly broad geographical sweep. Certainly the westernmost “forms” in Albania and Greece have already been separated off and described as new species. This stock originally hails from Turkish seed. The species was originally named Leontice altaica by Pallas in 1779. It was later transferred to Gymnospermium by Spach, in 1839.
Picture 2 is from Wikimedia by Ettrig used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.