PlantFiles: Naked-flowering Crocus
Crocus nudiflorus

Thanks for the fascinating notes Howard_C. Your flowers look a deeper colour than any of the ones I've seen over here in the wild. They have been flowering here since September, and I've seen them from high in the Pyrenees to some relatively low ground near where I live.

This plant is very tough, it is the only autumn flowering crocus that we have been able to naturalise in our lawn in St John's, Newfoundland, and I have seen it growing right in the middle of the race track at Warwick (UK) racecourse. Unusually for a crocus, it increases by stolons and can come up several inches away from the original site. Yet it is rarely offered in the trade and is expensive when it is. I imported two corms from Broadleigh Gardens in 1978 at 75p each, and now have literally hundreds of plants.

It is the earliest of the true autmn croci here, appearing in late September and continuing through October. The flowers are quite large and a rich purple with contrasting yellow anthers and stigmas. The typical silver-centred, grassy leaves come up in spring and must be allowed to die down naturally to keep the flowers coming. The corms may be lifted for replanting in August. N.B. the corms produced at the ends of the stolons are long and narrow, more like worms or pupae than normal crocus corms, but they will adopt the 'right' shape before flowering! Flowering corms are rather small.

The history of this species is quite interesting since, although it is native to the mountain meadows of the French-Spanish border area it was first described from England, where there are long established feral populations in mediaeval Lamas fields whose regime of grazing only during summer and winter suited a plant that is above ground in autumn and spring. (E.g. those at Warwick racecourse.) There is strong evidence that this species was used as a source of saffron by the herbalists of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, since many of the English populations are at locations formerly occupied by them. It has also been shown that their stigmas contain the same chemicals as those of the true saffron crocus, C. sativus, even if they are a lot smaller. We have collected our own saffron for the last few years, picking the stigmas out with tweezers and drying them on top of the fridge - but I'm glad my living doesn't depend on it!