Description
(syn. Leopoldia massyanum)
Muscari massayanum is unique in having a dense crown of pink-tinged, pedicellate, sterile flowers, though it is not invariably the “pink Muscari” some books suggest. The most frequent forms encountered in the wild are appear to be those with darker, navy-blue and violet sterile flowers. In all the lower, fertile flowers are greenish-yellow and are beautifully fragrant, with a musky scent suggesting kinship with the similarly fragrant M. macrocarpum and muscarimi.
The unusual fruits are notably large, 15-22mm capsules held on very short pedicels. These are shed before seed
dispersal.
The smallish bulbs like a hot, dry summer rest to induce flowering. Grows happily in a sunny, well-drained loam.
The ‘Pink form’ makes just two, wide, flat, purplish-suffused leaves, coiling flat on the ground. The raceme is dense. and long. The lower, fertile, flowers are very strongly fragrant and are yellow, lightly overlaid with pink so they appear to be peach. They are tipped with black. The upper section of the fertile flowers has yellow buds more heavily overlaid with red, giving a lovely pink colour and this section of the spike merges, almost imperceptibly into the upper tuft of sterile flowers which are pure bright pink. This makes the pink portion of the spike longer than usual.
As we now offer several different stocks of this fabulous species, we have appended each with a name. The stocks themselves have not changed. However this ‘Pink form’ was only introduced to our lists in August 2016. It was a totally new introduction then and had not been offered before that even without the cultivar name.
