Description
(miniatus)
A delightful autumn-flowering species from the south west of Spain and perhaps parts of adjacent north Africa. This has nicely shaped flowers of crystalline white, with a small, orange corona (cup) in the centre. The cup can be triangular (and it usually is and as we illustrate it) but it also inclines to more circular at times. The flowers are lightly and pleasantly fragrant.
The botany of some of these autumn-flowering Spanish-African and Mediterranean species is both complex and confused, littered with synonyms, shifting botanical opinions and downright incorrect identifications, but this entity is distinct and quite easily recognisable once you have any familiarity with the species involved (deficiens, elegans, obsoletus and serotinus).
In horticulture this flowers with some leaves present (or with very stout, significantly-photosynthetic flower stems, in which case it does not make leaves) throughout October and into November and our strain seems to make a reasonable bulb size for an autumn miniature (the bulb size is naturally larger than serotinus, on the par with obsoletus but smaller than elegans). It is also more free with its offsets than many autumnal species and forms, making small, tight clumps in time. In addition, the seed of the strain offered was selected from clumped plants, in the hope that they would pass on some of this habit to their progeny. This strain does not, we find, need quite the horticultural trickery to make it flower well and it is more tolerant of a little summer water than many, still flowering well without such a hard summer bake and fertilised rewetting, though it does still need a warm, dry rest and none of the autumnal Narcissus will ever be plants for growing outside in the UK.
Raised from a collection first found near Moron, Las Ramiras, Calle Monolete in s.w. Spain at 250m, growing in damp roadside ditches but within a very dry area. One or two vigorous clumps were split and a few collected from each in the hope of vigorous, vegetative increase. In fact this form or strain has proven to be very vigorous from seed also and represents out most robust form.
