Mystery Plant - solved!! Autumn Crocus.....

This article could also be titled "At last! I've found out what the mystery plant is!" or possibly "The importance of persistence, when trying to identify an unknown plant."

What am I talking about?

Back in February of this year, I encountered these leaves in one of "my" gardens:

The bed was mostly bare, just some clumps of these wide, somewhat fleshy leaves.

I had no idea what they belonged to, and nor did the Client.

I couldn't remember seeing anything in flower in that part of the bed, and nor could the Client.

They certainly weren't Daffodils, far too "limp". 

Nor were they early Bluebells - far too stout, and too tall - they were shin height.

They looked rather like Lily leaves, but I couldn't think of a Lily that would be up in February...it was quite a mystery. I looked through some of my reference books, couldn't find anything that fit: I did some cursory internet searching but that didn't help: I asked my fellow gardeners, but none of them recognised the leaves, either.

I told the Client that we would have to wait, and see what happened.

Months passed.

By May, the leaves were tatty and ragged, and there had not been any sign of flowers.

Had I missed them? 

I was in this garden every week, but I didn't always work in this particular area, so it was possible that I had missed the flowers altogether... there were no flowering stems, no evidence of flowers at all.

My Client and I looked at each other, dolefully. 

"Perhaps we missed them?" they said.

"Perhaps they didn't flower this year?" I suggested. Sometimes bulbs come up "blind", ie with no flowers, for a variety of reasons.

We shrugged, and moved on.

Then, last week, I was working on this bed: it's been full of Solomon's Seal, which is lovely, but is a bit of a one-trick pony, in the sense that once it's over for the year, that's it, no more: the leaves get eaten to shreds by the pesky Sawfly caterpillars, so we cut down what's left of the stalks, and we are left with bare earth for the rest of the year. 

My Client and I had agreed to move away from the monoculture, and to intersperse the Solomon's Seal with some tall white Iris from elsewhere in the garden, along with some excess Sedum, and a little small-leaved Geranium to fill the gaps, while still leaving a mass of Solomon's Seal, for the early part of the year.

So there I was, fork on shoulder, on my way to prepare the bed by digging out some spaces for the Iris, and what do you think I saw, in the otherwise pretty much empty bed?

 Mystery solved! 

The leaves belonged to the Colchicum autumnale, whose common name you could almost guess, couldn't you? Yes, it's Autumn Crocus, even though it's not actually a crocus. 

Also known as "Naked Ladies" for the obvious reason!

They do their flowering now, in autumn, then they send up their leaves in the depths of winter: then their leaves die down in early summer, and they lie inert for months, then they send up the flowers, all alone, in autumn! 

How weird is that?

As you can see in the photo above, the flowers are fragile, so a cold morning can lay them down on their sides:  heavy rain will flatten them; and they are pretty much impossible to move when they are flowering.

But when they are fresh, and the late summer sun catches them... lovely!

They do look rather like a Crocus, don't they? You can see why they acquired that particular common name.

But they are much larger, they stand almost ankle high (when not flattened by wind, rain, and careless pets, of course), and although they are only there for a few days, their ephemeral fragility is wonderful to behold.

In a couple of weeks, they will be gone: leaving nothing to indicate where they were, until they send up their leaves, in the depths of winter.

And the moral of this story is twofold: firstly, this reinforces the notion that when you move into a new house, don't do anything drastic to the garden for the first year, because you never know what's going to come up where, until you have been through all the seasons: and secondly, when you can't immediately identify a plant, don't give up: take photos, make notes of where it was, and revisit the place at different times of year - and eventually, you will find out what it is!!

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