I planted ‘Nancy Lindsay’ last year but couldn’t get a photo then. I have yet to see what the autumnale type looks like, but this flower is much bigger and shaped differently than the C. autumnale ‘Album’ that bloomed for me earlier this fall. I can see why it was originally considered its own species: Colchicum pannonicum, because it doesn’t look much like the species. I don’t know who decides these things, or how they inform the rest of the world of their decisions. I would like to be more in the loop.
Anyway, I bought ‘Nancy Lindsay’ because she was said to have a purple “stem” (technically a perianth tube). I especially love colchicums with purple tubes, but they often prove elusive. Bowles describes the “original” C. speciosum as being “distinguished by the deep lilac colour of the tube,” but neither the speciosum I purchased from McClure and Zimmerman nor the one I purchased from Odyssey Bulbs (which I consider a more reliable source) has the purple tube. And I’ve only seen one photograph of it that way, in Andrew Lawson’s The Gardener’s Book of Color
About Kathy Purdy
Kathy Purdy discovered the joys of writing in fourth grade, when she started corresponding with a former classmate. She's been writing letters ever since, first on looseleaf, then electronically, and now as weblog entries. That makes you, the blog reader, her pen pal. Her first independent (though frustrating) attempts at gardening were made in high school, though the gardening bug didn't bite hard until her mid-thirties, when she found herself mistress of a rural home on 15 acres. • USDA Hardiness Zone:4 • AHS Heat Zone: 3 • Location: rural; Southern Tier of NY • Geographic type: foothills of Appalachian Mountains • Soil Type: acid clay • Experience level: intermediate • Particular interests: colchicums, narcissus, cottage gardening, NY native plants, gardening with/for children
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Flickr is fun!
You should look at http://del.icio.us/ and make a Cold Climate Gardening set of bookmarks. Del.icio.us is a bookmarking site where you can tag your book marks much like Flickr.
With flickr, you can find photos based on other peoples tags, like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/wildflowers/
Similare function in del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/tag/flowers
have fun!
Why, thank you.
‘Nancy Lindsay’ looks very lovely…such a graceful arrangement of petals (and kudos to the photographer).
{ 1 trackback }