Croci

[Tiggrx]

Originally Posted by davidbr

Beautiful scenes, Tiggrx - what's the situation at Warley Place at the moment? I'm planning to make a trip there myself pretty soon, but I'm unsure whether to go now or leave it until the end of March or even April - a report I read of an organised Wild Flower Society excursion wasn't until March 18th and that was in a year without the snows we've suffered this winter.

If you are after Crocus and Snowdrops then now is a very good time to go, other things I saw in flower included Scilla bifolia, Trachystemon orientalis and Leucojum vernum. However there were loads of things that were not out yet so I am hoping to visit again in a month or two.
The people we talked to there said the flowers are at least a month behind the stage they were at this time last year.
If you are visiting remember to check the website for dates it is open.

[poschiavanus]

Just thought I'd add these images from the churchyard of the Priory Church in Lenton. This is on the site of a huge medieval priory: the presumed source of crocuses in the Nottingham area:




Carr wrote in the Victoria County History volume (around 1907):

Perhaps the most famous of our disappearing plants though of course not a true native is the purple spring crocus (Crocus vernus), which formerly covered many acres of the Nottingham meadows with such a luxuriant growth as to suggest the idea of its having been sown as a crop. Much of the ground this beautiful plant occupied is now built over, and although it is still common in places its habitat becomes more restricted year by year. In the same locality grew abundantly the autumnal crocus (C. nudiflorus], first recorded as a British plant in 1738 by Dr. Charles Deering, who found it 'in Nottingham meadows and about Trent Bridge.' I have seen it in some numbers within the last fifteen years in a field close to Trent Bridge, but the locality has recently been built upon. The plant still, however, persists in fair quantity in some of the Trent meadows.

There are now very few sites, even though some effort was made 20 years ago to translocate crocuses from areas being developed as a retail park.

[Tiggrx]

Originally Posted by poschiavanus

Just thought I'd add these images from the churchyard of the Priory Church in Lenton. This is on the site of a huge medieval priory: the presumed source of crocuses in the Nottingham area:




Carr wrote in the Victoria County History volume (around 1907):



There are now very few sites, even though some effort was made 20 years ago to translocate crocuses from areas being developed as a retail park.

Looks an amazing colony - but it is Crocus tommasinianus rather than C. vernus

[poschiavanus]

Just goes to show I shouldn't believe everything I'm told!

I had a smidgin of doubt when uploading these because they did seem to have the white perianth tube described by Crawley in the Flora of Berkshire, which I read a little earlier today.

I'll have to go and investigate the other putative Crocus vernus sites in the city quickly.