Description
A little-known and badly documented species but one which, once you know it, is very distinct. This has been, wrongly, compared with R. columnae by some authors, a relationship fiercely disputed by recent authorities basing their research more on field studies and living plants, than on dried specimens in the herbarium.
It is a tiny miniature which has has tiny flowers. These sit not that much above the surface of the compost above the very narrow, prostrate and sinuous, dark-green leaves (which are borne at the same time as the flowers). The flowers are pure white with yellow anthers sitting around a frilled and feather white style of the same length. Deep in the throat the colour shades to yellowish, which is enhanced by fallen (yellow) pollen. The reverse of the petals is greenish, toning to darker green and a central dark strips, most visible when the flowers close. A brown scarious bract sits below the flowers. Our main picture shows Romulea rollii (top, right) with a flower of Romulea bulbocodium leichtliniana, (front, left) for an illustration of the dwarf but multiflowered habit of rollii.
Readily grown, as for all of the other species that we offer, in a well-drained, loam-based compost and happy, plunged under alpine glass where the small size of the corms means that a lot can be fitted into a small container. This grows on the usual Mediterranean bulb cycle, dry in summer, growth in autumn, and spring and it flowers, in Spring, from around March-April. It might survive outside in a sunny, raised bed, but such a dwarf species is easily (physically) lost in such a situation.
Raised from seed found on the Greek Island of Chios, under the collection number OP.29214 which I think is an Oron Peri collection. No habitat data is available.
Introduced to our lists April 2024
