- Author: Jenni Dodini
Steve and I meandered up the coast of Oregon to the city of Astoria. Astoria is a very old town, one of the first on the west coast. The historians noted several times that it was founded by John Jacob Astor and is considered one of his biggest financial failures. He wanted to make it a major port, but the mouth of the Columbia River proved to be a very treacherous place and many ships sank there. Eventually, Capt. George Flavel settled in Astoria. Capt. Flavel developed a business of escorting the ships through the mouth of the river up to Portland. He became quite wealthy and built a lovely home for his wife, son and two daughters. It is now a museum, and is well worth the visit. While there, we wandered around the grounds and I came across these purple flowers. At first I thought that they were an amaryllis variety, but knew that to not be right, so I asked one of the docents. These are known as fall blooming crocus. It made sense then. When Capt. Flavel built the house, he had a wide variety of plants and trees shipped in, these crocus among them.
True to my nature, I wanted them for my own lovely garden, and staying in line with the advice I give freely, "Do your research" I set about getting information.
I found that even though they are called crocus, they actually belong to the Liliaceae family while the other crocus belong to the Iridaceae family. There are fall blooming varieties of this family, the most familiar being Crocus saltivus, the saffron crocus. These flowers are only about 2.5 inches tall and the leaves are tall and narrow. The fall blooming crocus are members of the Colchicaceae family. This plant is Colchicum autumnale. It is native to Europe, North Africa and Asia. It is considered a bulb, but actually develops from a corm. The flowers are somewhat delicate, and do well when planted near taller plants in the garden that will shade them. They are sometimes called "Naked Ladies" because, like the other "Naked lady", Amaryllis belladonna, the flowers emerge from the ground long after the leaves die back. The flowers are mostly lavender in color, but also come in pink and white. My disappointment came when I found out that this plant does best in USDA zone 5. Fairfield is not in USDA zone 5. :-(
For those of you who have had the misfortune to have ever experienced a bout of gout, the drug colchicine is derived from this plant. Colchicine, and this plant, are poisonous and the therapeutic index is very narrow. Too little really doesn't work, and too much will give you a terrible GI experience (from both directions) and can be fatal.
I guess that I will not be ordering these bulbs from the Internet even though there are a boatload of sites that have them available. The alternative is to go back to Oregon...