Description
Soft, pastel primrose flowers of such a pale shade that they really appear to be white, with highly reflexed petals are borne early in the year along with quite long, but narrow dark green foliage. This is one for growing outside in the UK, in a well-drained, fertile compost. In common with most of the Ganymedes section they simply do badly under glass or glasshouse conditions. Perhaps (we suspect) because they become too dry, hot and stressed in summer.
A gorgeous species within the Ganymedes section, which also houses N. triandrus. Indeed you may see this given as a synonym for N. triandrus, however this is not correct and the two can be easily separated on several points (thanks to Rafa for making this clear). The main distinguishing aid is to look at the back of the leaves. The leaves of N. iohannis have several veins and not all are parallel or symmetric (where N. triandrus has two raised, parallel ridges running the length of each leaf) .
In cross-section the leaves of N. iohannis are shaped almost like a moon segment and they are approximately concave and convex, on their inner and outer surfaces respectively. (In N. triandrus the inner face is curved whilst the outer face is very angular with strong ridges)
In addition to the leaf differences, the flowers have different proportions between their petals and corona, the two being very approximately the same length in N. iohannis (whilst in N. triandrus, the petals are significantly longer than the corona).
This was described by Fernández Casas in Fontqueria 56(19), 29–IV-2011. (link in our customer resources area)
Raised from Rafa Diez Dominguez seed.
Narcissus iohannis
