Colchicums For a Touch of Spring in Fall

Like immense rosy-lavender crocuses, colchicums brighten the autumn garden at a time when most other flowers have lost their freshness. They are easily grown, striking in appearance and have no insect or disease troubles of any consequence. What’s more, they increase so rapidly that from a few corms one gets many plants in a few years.

Similarity of this plant to crocus is superficial. Colchicums belong to the lily family and have six stamens whereas crocus belong to the iris family and have three stamens. What is usually called the bulb is a tunicate corm which produces large, coarse leaves in spring. These die down in late June.

In September the naked flowers, which are long, slender, crocus-like tubes, seem to spring right out of the ground. Each flower is short-lived but more keep coming for several weeks so that a well-established plant or colony of several plants is a striking sight. Although there are a few white varieties, flowers are mostly shades of rosy-lavender.

It’s an interesting fact that the flowers of this plant come in fall and the seed capsules the following spring when they may be found in the cup formed by the bases of the inner leaves. Capsules left unharvested in a sawdust mulch will send up a thick mat of seedlings a year later.

Most of the species are native to the Mediterranean region and western Asia in the mountains but they are hardy in New York State. They have no special soil requirements, thriving in any good, well-drained soil and they are happy in full sun and do well in partial shade.

I grow my plants, a collection of varieties, under a mulch where the only care they receive is the removal of an occasional weed that comes up through the mulch. The mulch prevents mud from splashing on the flowers during heavy rains.

Eventually, as the natural increase through bulb division results in a crowded condition which makes for weak foliage and sparse flowering, the clumps are dug and divided, yielding many corms for the garden. In order to keep up the vigor of the plants, the foliage, untidy as it may be, must not be removed until it has died down in July.

Corms may be dug and reset at any time after the foliage dies down. Stock from dealers should be set in August, if possible, otherwise the corms will bloom even without being set in the ground as they do not need soil and moisture to flower.

A planting depth of 2 to 3 inches to the top of the corm is sufficient. About 6 inches between corms is enough for a good display and several in a colony are better than single plants scattered through the border.

Large, unattractive floppy leaves limit the use of colchicums in the garden. Certainly they’re hardly suitable for the foreground in a rock garden or a place among small plants anywhere.

They, however, are good foreground plants for Japanese anemones, fall asters and chrysanthemums. They stand competition well and may be grown in grass or the wild garden. Since the naked flowers need the greenery of other plants as a background for their beauty, ground covers such as vinca may be used to provide a setting, support the long tubes and protect them from being splashed.

From several sources in this country, I have collected 21, of which seven are varieties of Colchicum autumnale, nine hybrids and the rest probably relatives of C. speciosum. Many are so similar that it’s not worthwhile to acquire them.

Colors may be variously described as rosy-lavender, lilac and pink. Hybrids are all unusually large flowered.

Colchium autumnale itself is the usual one offered commercially. Its variety album is smaller flowered but an at-tractive white. The double flowered variety I obtained was not true to name, but the true double is considered attractive. Atropurpureum, the darkest colored variety in the group, is well worthwhile. Bornmuelleri has immense vase-like flowers of rosy pink with white center, the first to bloom.

Colchicum speciosum is large and handsome with chalice-shaped flowers varying from rose to purple. C. speciosum also has a white variety.

Gardeners looking for something different, for a touch of spring in fall should try colchicums.

By George Slate

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