Description
(subspecies armena)
This has medium sized, striking bright red to crimson flowers with a small black eye, picked out with a gold border. The colour is intense and the plant stands out from some distance away.
This has fur-lined bulb tunics which, in the wild at least, serve to protect its comparatively small bulbs from the excesses of summer heat and dryness in its native habitats. These localities are, incidentally, in Eastern and Northern Turkey and in this case the stock is traceable to the area around Erzerum. They have been brought on vegetatively over many years, but are direct progeny of the original botanical garden collection.
