Who cares about Snowdrops, it's Crocus time!!

Hahaha, only joking! 

I love Snowdrops (although my utter favourite are the Winter Aconites, Eranthis hyamelis), but today it's time to say hello to -  errr, Croci? Crocuses? What's the plural of Crocus, someone?

Anyway, regardless of what we call them, it's crocus time, and here's a clump of them from one of "my" gardens:

Aren't they lovely?

Mrs Client was somewhat mystified as to the state of the crocuses - yes, I think we'll go with "crocuses" - on the main lawn, because they were all lying on their sides, utterly flattened.

Unlike this lot, which were standing up, proudly.

"I don't understand it," Mrs Client said, "We thought that ours were all flattened because our doggo runs around all over the lawn, but we were visiting some dog-free friends, and theirs were exactly the same."

I asked if the crocuses on the friend's lawn were, like hers, mostly single flowers, or were they in clumps, like the ones in this photo.

"Oh, just like ours, all single ones," she replied.

Well, there's the answer: Crocuses are delicate, tender little things, and when growing singly, they just can't stand up to any degree of punishment, whether it's dogs running around on them, wind blowing them over, or frost causing them to sag over sideways.

Single crocuses - usually found in a lawn, but not always - are the result of  natural seeding, where an individual seed creates an individual plant.

Big tough clumps not only look better, but the stems can support each other - not against dog trampling, admittedly, but against wind and frost.

Clumps are normally planted, or at least they start off as a planted clump: you get a much better density of colour when they are grouped together like this, and because the stems are closely packed, quite a lot of the seeds will fall between the stems, rather than being blown away on the wind, so over time, the clump will get thicker and thicker.

Eventually, there will come a time when the clump may need to be lifted and split, but not for many years.

Meanwhile, what of those rather forlorn individual crocuses in the lawn? Well, eventually they will create a swathe, rather than a clump, which will be lovely to behold: another of "my" gardens has a wonderful swathe of golden yellow crocuses, under a very old Apple tree, and although they are individual plants, rather than a clump, the effect is magnificent. 

Also, because they are older plants, each individual stem is stronger than those in the "flattened crocus" garden. I happen to know that the flattened ones are young plants, because I've been there four years, and when I started there, the lawn was just grass, not a single wildflower or bulb in it. Since we stopped mowing the grass (we just cut curving grassy paths) and started encouraging wild flowers, the crocuses - which, presumably, were mown off before they had a chance to grow - have started to spread out across the area.

And a final comment - yes, it's a bit sad to see flattened crocuses, but in some ways, I like them for this weakness: it's a bit like cherry tree blossom, we enjoy it all the more because it is so ephemeral, it lasts such a short time.

So let;s all enjoy our crocuses, while we can!

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