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Brighten up dull gardens
Crocus have six petals that form a little brandy snifter of a flower just inches tall. Expect pink, lavender, yellow and purple blooms. The spring blooming crocus, C. tomasinianus, is in the iris family but you can buy ones that bloom in the fall and are actually a lily. For some reason, we also get to call this late bloomer a "crocus". Crocus blooms with the hellebores in early spring and there isn't a gardening catalog that I've ever seen that doesn't have a picture of them blooming stalwartly in the snow. Plant them with hellebores and snowflakes which bloom at the same time. There's magic in the way crocus naturalize. As they reproduce they pay no attention to the colors their "parents" were. Plant yellow and purple and you just may get pink and lavender offspring. It makes one wonder what was going on in their gene pool a few generations ago. Plant crocus corms, really an enlarged stem, in the fall. Select a place in full sun where water isn't likely to stand over the winter. Give them some room - even one corm will quickly form a large clump and doesn't fuss about the overcrowding.
One crocus, C. sativus, is a source of saffron, the world's most expensive spice. Plan to spend around $15 for less than a teaspoon. Saffron is the ingredient that colors and flavors yellow rice and Spanish bean soup. This spice comes from the stigma and style of the blooms. Since each blossom only has three tiny stigma and grows very close to the ground, you can see that the harvesting would send the price way up. Squirrels will dig up and eat your crocus corms before you get back in the house. Cover the corms with chicken wire. The plants will come up through the mesh.
Dora Garrick Fleming lives in Grove Hill. E-mail her at: dorafleming@galaxycable.net .
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