[pbs] Fragrance in Colchicums
Tom Mitchell
tom at evolution-plants.com
Fri Sep 26 15:43:34 EDT 2008
I've recently been given about 20 un-named Colchicum cultivars by a
good gardening friend and, inspired by Jane's post, I went into the
garden to sniff them. I'd always thought that Colchicum were
unscented but, to my surprise, I noticed that most do indeed have a
mild (to my nose) scent. Several of the cultivars that I was given
have a scent reminiscent of honey. I love scented plants but
ironically have a poor sense of smell. I occasionally wonder how
differently each of us perceives scent, surely the hardest sense to
articulate, except by reference to another smell!
Does anyone know of a reference work on Colchicum more recent (and
better illustrated) than E.A. Bowles' book form the fifties? I'd love
to try and identify what I've got...
Tom
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:42:53 -0700
> From: Jane McGary <janemcgary at earthlink.net>
> Subject: [pbs] Fragrance in Colchicum
> To: Pacific Bulb Society <pbs at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20080924173225.01705d88 at pop.earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> This afternoon I was looking at the colchicums in the bulb frame and
> noticed a sweet fragrance. It proved to emanate from a large-
> flowered one
> that I received originally under the name "Colchicum atropurpureum
> 'Drake's
> Form'." "C. atropurpureum" is a name that appears in Stearn's old
> monograph, but E. A. Bowles's discussion of it is both confused and
> confusing; he seems to mean that the name has been variously
> applied, and
> concludes that "there is no species to which it can be ascribed,"
> although
> saying that it is close to C. turcicum -- an opinion repeated in
> Christopher Brickell's entry for it in the AGS Encyclopaedia of
> Alpines. I
> don't know which Drake found this form; perhaps it was the English
> nurseryman Jack Drake. Very likely it should just be called Colchicum
> 'Drake's Form'.
>
> Anyway, after noticing this naturally I went around sniffing colchicum
> flowers, and found no other with this particular honey scent. A few
> were
> slightly malodorous, and most had a faint, mildly pleasing scent that
> reminds me of a good-quality non-perfumed milled white face soap. C.
> speciosum hasn't opened here yet, but it is the parent of many garden
> hybrids, so I'll await its fragrance to see if that is where
> 'Drake's Form'
> got it.
>
> Incidentally, while looking up "atropurpureum," I discovered that
> the name
> C. laetum has been applied to two different entities. The true
> species is
> small-flowered, and the large-flowered plant with many narrow-tepaled
> flowers, which is what I have here and have distributed, is
> something else
> -- one author says it is allied with C. byzantinum. So if you have C.
> laetum from me, it is C. laetum hort. (the abbreviation used to
> designate
> "taxonomic" names that are used in horticulture but not recognized
> in the
> botanical literature), and we must both continue trying to get the
> true
> species, while blaming the English and the Dutch, who have cast us
> into
> this confusion, though in the process providing us with some very
> beautiful
> garden flowers.
>
> Jane McGary
> Northwestern Oregon, USA
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> pbs mailing list
> pbs at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/pbs
>
>
> End of pbs Digest, Vol 68, Issue 28
> ***********************************
More information about the pbs
mailing list