Crocus tommasinianus - Early Crocus

Crocus tommasinianus is one of the most beautiful botanical crocuses, and one of the easiest to grow. The star-shaped flowers are tinted with lavender to mauve-violet, with golden yellow stamens illuminating the whole. From the end of winter, they announce spring before Dutch hybrid crocuses appear. It naturalises in lawns or meadows, flower beds, and rock gardens. It is perfect for beautiful ephemeral plantings in pots. It can be grown in full sun or partial shade, in any well-drained, poor soil.

Crocus tommasinianus belongs to the Iridaceae family and is native to central Europe, including Hungary, Croatia, former Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. This prolific plant forms significant colonies in upright clumps 12cm (5in) tall. It has a rapid growth rate. Flowering occurs from February to March. The plants have delicate flowers, measuring 2 to 3.5cm (1in) long. They are cup-shaped and star-shaped, in shades of mauve varying in intensity, with whiter areas inside the petals, up to the throat. The flower's centre is filled with yellow stamens grouped in a tube, with a white base. The flowers close at night and in bad weather, opening widely in the sun. The foliage is deciduous, composed of fine, thick linear leaves. They are shiny medium green, with a white-silver central stripe. The bulbs here are corms. A corm is, in plant morphology, an underground storage organ resembling a bulb, but formed from a swollen stem surrounded by scales.

Crocus tommasinianus looks wonderful in rock gardens, with its flowering emerging from stones bleached by the sun. It will also thrive on the edge of woodlands, bordering a hedge, planted en masse at the base of deciduous shrubs (lilacs, mock orange, viburnums) with Anemone blanda and Cyclamen coum, or in the middle of a lawn along with winter aconites, snowdrops or a carpet of violets, and of course, with other early-flowering crocuses. This crocus is also suitable for outdoor pot planting, and can be used in green roofs.

Crocus roots can contract like a spring, allowing the plant to settle at its ideal depth.