Description
This has been known in horticulture, more familiarly, as Sternbergia fischeriana for some considerable time. It has now been decided that vernalis has priority as a name.
A plant which is rarely seen these days, this is a bright yellow, Spring-flowering, species. In effect it looks like a broad-petalled, yellow form of candida, though the reverse description also works.
The flowers are a good size, at least as big as the best lutea forms, though vernalis is spring flowering. The petals are a little narrower and differences from lutea continue in the leaves, which vary from green (in this form) to glaucous blue-green in other forms. As a rule the leaves are twisted along their length.
This likes deep planting in a very fertile soil with a good dry rest in summer. I often advise NOT over-baking your bulbs, but Sternbergia fischeriana really does like it warm and dry in summer.
Thinly spread in the wild across Eastern Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq reaching Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,, Syria spreading eventually to Kashmir as an ornamental and perhaps not native yet the true species seems rare in cultivation, in the UK at least
For UK sales ONLY NOT available for export
