When spring flowers, especially the dainty crocuses, fade, we often wish their fleeting beauty would remain with us longer.
However, planting colchicums allows us to enjoy a delightful flowering carpet in the fall when other flowers prepare for winter. Seeing these showy chalice-like flowers emerge from the ground without leaves is a joy.
Commonly referred to as autumn crocuses or fall meadow saffron, colchicums belong to the lily family. These are not to be confused with certain species of crocuses, which also bloom in the fall.
Reliably Hardy
These fall-flowering bulbs are native to areas with weather conditions similar to those in North America, long warm periods with short springs.
The leaves appear then, develop rapidly and disappear before the summer heat arrives. Thus colchicums are well suited to our gardens since they are reliably hardy.
Since the leaves are large and somewhat coarse, they are best planted in combination with narcissus, primroses, and other spring-flowering plants.
They can also be grouped with heather, faIl asters, alyssum, or among such ground covers as periwinkle, Japanese spurge, small-leaved plantain lilies, lamiums, and others.
If placed in a border’s foreground, the area will be bare through the sunnier parts. Then, too, the decaying foliage is unsightly.
Soil Requirements
Their soil requirements are easily met in sandy, loamy, or even clayey soil, provided the rater does not stagnate around the bulbs. In heavy soils, plant them on a shovelful of sand.
During the summer, they can remain absolutely dry. Even without water, the flowers develop out of the stored food material in bulbs.
The genus is native to the mountains of Europe, South East Europe, and Western and Central areas, similar to a belt across America from Canada along the Appalachian mountains to Alabama and from the Atlantic Coast to the Rocky Mountains.
Colchicum Autumnale
Colchicum autumnale, native to Germany, has pink flowers, which are the smallest of the group. There is a single white form and a showy double form as well.
The species is ideal for naturalizing in rock gardens, meadows, along the edges of woodlands, or in shrub borders.
The leaves are also the smallest of the group, a little larger than those of narcissus, and the white variety seems to multiply rapidly.
Colchicum Speciosum
Larger in flower and leaf is C. speciosum, with attractive rosy pink flowers, although it does not multiply as rapidly as C. autumnale.
There are hybrids of C. speciosum like Autumn Queen, lilac Muller, and Violet Queen, which are usually deeper in color than the species, often depending on the amount of water available in the soil.
Colchicum Bornmuelleri
One of the largest flowering sorts is C. bornmuelleri, deep-rose in color and whitish on the inside, while C. speciosum appears to be speckled on the inside.
An interesting fact with all the colchicums is that fertilization of the flower takes place in the fall, but the seedpod appears with the leaves the following spring.
Then the leaves supply the needed nourishment for the development of the fruit, a typical example of the adaptation of a plant to its climate and surroundings.
Never Remove Foliage
Bulbs can be fertilized in the spring if the leaves remain green. Never pull or remove the leaves because this weakens the newly developing bulb and often results in no flower appearing in the fall since the bulbs cannot store the needed nutrients.
With ground covers or low perennials, enough litter, leaves, or other humus is constantly added naturally to topsoil so that the bulbs have plant food available.
In this healthy and natural combination, the bulbs multiply into clumps, and after a few years, they can be divided just after the leaves have turned yellow and are beginning to disappear.
Growth Habits
Another fact to consider is that the bulbs grow sideways each year and tend to project themselves upward. Therefore, if they grow in bare soil or in beds where the leaves are raked out, they tend to weaken, are more subject to the cold and heat, and the stems blow over easily in strong winds.
However, the bulbs can compensate for this condition by gro-ing new roots, which pull the bulbs downward.
This process uses up some of the stored plant food, which might sometimes account for the lack of flowers in a given year. However, colchicums are extremely hardy and long-lived.
An ideal plant to associate colchicums with is sweet woodruff. Its delicate foliage and masses of white flowers in May make a pleasing undercover for the tall leaves.
Also, the woodruff is still green in the fall when the pink or white colchicum flowers appear above it.
44659 by Heinrich Rohrbach